


And Even God Weeps

by pyracanth



Category: Rosario + Vampire
Genre: Characters listed are the main perspective characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 07:26:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyracanth/pseuds/pyracanth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alucard and Akasha, or the "Outer Moka," are dead.<br/>Tsukune has not let despair rule him. He loves the "Inner" Moka as much as he had loved the "Outer." After the Alucard Incident, he and Moka remain lovers, determined to let nothing tear them apart. Meanwhile, a girl begins to die from heartbreak, and another descends into madness from desire.<br/>Kokoa visits her father, a man broken in mind by grief.  Before he falls into a fit of madness, he spits out a fateful secret: the Shuzen yakuza family, despite its lack of leadership, is still operating. A sinister puppetmaster is pulling at the strings of the organization, and keeping it in operation.<br/>Fouhai finds evidence- and only evidence- of the presence of an extremely dangerous slayer. The slayer has only appeared in one place, and no trace of him has been found since the discovery.<br/>Far away, in America, a college student signs up for the newly renamed "Mikogami Academy," a school where he expects to get his bachelor in the Arts, and hit the road to a simple and painless life. However, his arrival at the Academy is a catalyst; memories long forgotten and best buried begin to surface, both his and others'.<br/>All the while, a dark force makes it move...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

La plus belle des rises du Diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas.

The finest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.

-Charles Baudelaire

 

PROLOGUE

Bones crunched under heavy feet, and dead muscle burst with reserved blood.

The figure stalked the empty courtyard while death accompanied him, whispering wooing comments that fell on deaf ears. Why would he listen? For no simple demon would pierce his soul, not now, not ever.

The sky was broken, grey and dark and roiling, lightning flashing in the distance and enormous thunder rolling across the clouds. Perhaps it was earth weeping for the death of a god, defeated by a mere mortal. Well, maybe not just a mere mortal, but a mortal nonetheless. And to say that the Fallen One was a god was also up for debate. If a man goes insane and no one notices, does that make him a god?

But no rain fell here. It purposely avoided the stench of death, strong in the bitter salt wind and swirling into mad laughter as it swept among the dead bodies that littered the place.

It was too late. Too late. It wasn't just that everyone here was dead, those who lived were long gone! This island, once floating by engines that had long since imploded, had crashed into Tokyo, or whatever city it was, the only city anyone knew that was in Japan was Tokyo, and the island rebounded, sending it flying into the Pacific. The battle had just ended, and he could still hear the screams, though much more distant than before.

He wrung out the last of the seawater from his coat. It spilled on the face of a particularly ugly corpse of a ghoul. The body had been ripped apart, clean in half by some force that pulled it from both sides. Its intestines let out a foul odor of blood and shit, but mostly blood, the life force of so many humans that fed this monstrosity now slowly leaking out of its open sides.

He made precautions to purposely step on the brute's ugly face.

It was too late, now. Even that last bitch, too damn stubborn to die, had dragged herself off and onto some emergency boat, pretending to be a victim of a terrorist act and acting all cute for the American Coast Guard that had happened to pass a few miles away. She had used up the last of her devilry to protect this place from being seen by mortal eyes- though doing that made her just as mortal. The figure vaguely wondered whether the ungrateful bitch had killed her saviors or not.

He mumbled uncertainly to himself, and the voice echoed among the vaulted corridors as he took a single step into what remained of the Euro-esque castle. The fetid odor of death was rank here as well, though human intermingled with it. Fresh, living human, not digested. He wondered if that was the ghoul who had rampaged in the city. The boy was some hybrid, now, and that just wouldn't do. Just wouldn't do.

He took no more steps into the castle. He already knew what he had to do. He turned on his heel, and back to where he was needed.


	2. Drop One and Find It

1

Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

*** year(s) ago

TIME was praising the President again. Some bullshit about gay marriage and how it "changes America." Journalists say what they will, but from what Wilhelm was hearing, he could only say that the hate was getting worse. Not that he had anything against the haters, or the gays themselves. They did nothing for him, why should he care if one side strolls down the street with "GOD HATES YOU" signs and the other rainbow hearts and glitter? (Okay, maybe he did mind those gay pride festivals; the sheer false femininity was sickening.)

Wilhelm put down the magazine, face down.

The office here was dull, duller than even the rest of the social services. Perhaps the government believed that if they made their orphanages (which officials claimed weren't actually orphanages, but rather "child rehabilitation centers") dull enough, when the kids came out they would be just as boring as everyone else without having to do all the parenting stuff. Wilhelm wasn't sure if it had worked on him yet.

And the New Mexican accents to the place made it even worse. Sure, New Mexican art was fine, if arranged the right way, but putting a turquoise cross on a super-white wall and a random painting of an Indian in the middle of an otherwise blank wall did not help the atmosphere. Not to mention most of the workers here were white, unless you counted the illegal immigrants that worked as the janitors and the cleaning ladies for the kids' room, but no one, not even the super-liberal wackjobs here, actually cared about those riff-raff.

The director called him in. There were a few other kids left besides him; one was a twitchy ten year old who had obviously gotten in some kind of trouble, judging by how his eyes kept switching from the door to the floor. There was a big, beefy kid who had also done something wrong, and Wilhelm was smart enough to know that the kid was a bully who tormented kids just for the heck of it; unlike the cinema's version of the classical bully, this kid always got in trouble, since even a liberal could see the fat kid pummeling any random six year old that managed to even slightly enter his line of vision. Then there were the high school grads, only three besides Wilhelm who, like him, were to talk with the director about colleges and careers. He had a seen a few around at school, but he never talked with any of them, or anybody that was even distantly related to Social Services, for that matter. Hell, he didn't talk to most people.

The director's own office was near as bland as the waiting room, though in its own way. The man had forsaken the petty New Mexican rest-stop souvenirs for the more traditional pictures of family and friends, which to Wilhelm's eye may have actually been interesting if they didn't have the director in it. Otherwise, it was just another office- comfy swivel chairs, expensive oak or whatever type of wood it was desk, some diplomas on the wall. Boring. Standard liberal fare.

The director was perhaps the blandest thing of all in the whole of Social Services. Maybe Wilhelm could have been less judgmental about the man, and judging wasn't a thing he liked to do (but in a place full of liberals and nothing better to do, why not?), but this man, this monstrosity of bland, this eldritch horror of mind-numbing agony, was the most boring person on the planet. His repulsively dapper suit was enough to send even the most vilely happy and excited California valley-girl cheerleader in the world into a deep stupor. His demeanor was so cheerful that it almost sent Wilhelm into another epileptic fit. He had already had one just last night, and God knew he was dead tired from it. He took a few pills before entering the room, just to be safe.

"Ah, Wilhelm, buddy!" The director said, sporting his false smile and spouting out his signature cut and paste tagline as Wilhelm walked in, avoiding the top of the door by a mere few inches. "Come in, sit down! We've got a lot of ground to cover, today!" Wilhelm shut the door so that the others wouldn't have to bear his pain and agony. Not yet, anyway. He sat down.

"Boy, have you gotta lot of colleges on your trail! We've got more brochures and invitations coming for you than the rest of your fellows combined!" He pointed to a stack of papers that seemed about to tip over and spill on the floor. Brightly colored brochures, many-stamped letters, all addressed to the Social Services of Albuquerque. And him. Okay, maybe he had been a tad too smart- or what people assumed was intelligence. All he did was listen, memorize everything important the teacher and/or the textbook said, and barfed it back up on any piece of homework or test that was thrown at him. It got him A+ in all his classes, though, so he knew the strategy worked. He wasn't actually learning anything at all; else, he'd probably be out of here already and doing something useful with his life, instead of having some government lackey pushing him to go to yet another school for another four years of his life.

"Let's start with your top schools, the ones that fit your chosen profession…" the director scrolled through his computer, squinting at the information. Wilhelm doubted that the page was very full. He should know; he wrote the thing himself. "And you want to be a… professional graphic artist. Hm. You don't see too much of that nowadays, at least here in Albuquerque. Doesn't pay well, I think, in New Mexico. Planning on moving to New York, or maybe Europe? Those are the hotspots for such a profession."

"Japan was the place I'm aiming for." This wasn't a lie. Honestly, Wilhelm would've preferred to work anywhere, even New Mexico, as long as he was out of here. He was decent enough with programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator and even big-brand stuff; he had saved up enough to buy Adobe Creative Suite, and he was a hand at that. Japan had all those crazy people that poured their stuff onto every street sign they could get a hold of, and were paid reasonably well. Maybe not the place he'd be likely to reach, but he might as well try.

"Really? That's a great goal to set for yourself!" Which really meant: That's nice. I sincerely doubt that a po' boy like you could get anywhere in life, but, hell. You're screwed, esse. "You've got some big-name colleges after you, Mr. Schugen. Brown, MIT, Yale, Oxford (the English one, I believe), though those don't seem to fit your interests." He glanced to the stack of pamphlets. "We did receive several invitations from the Art Colleges- the Colorado one, the California branch. Good schools. Full Sail, UAT, Rocky Mountain. Yes, very good."

Wilhelm ignored the old man as he droned on about the merits of individual schools, the occasional rumor, or the bad jokes that liberals seem to find so hilarious. He took to perusing the brochures. Every letter had been opened already, courtesy of the US government that kept trying to weed out hoodlums and terrorists from Social Services even though they kept putting more and more kids into it. But brochures were brochures, and they happened to be far more interesting than anything the director had to say.

It was exactly as the director said. Every single pamphlet was from a big-namer. Rich, powerful, money-devouring universities that planned on making the next debt-ridden, unemployed bloodsucker. He threw away the shitty ones that fit that description, which the director didn't seem to mind, since he probably realized they were for Wilhelm.

One slipped through his fingers. It fell in the trashcan, which was well-deserved seeing it was another Harvard. His eyes casually fell on the next one, and then stopped.

He looked up. The director was bemoaning of Ivy-League graduates and how people like Wilhelm were the future of America. Wilhelm gladly interrupted him to answer his own burgeoning questions. "What is this? This school here?"

The director shut up for a moment to examine the pamphlet. Carefully, he read the blurb that adorned the front, muttering to himself the words so as to reassure himself. "Weird," he said aloud. "You don't see Asian schools send invitations to American students. Not at all. A racial thing, I'm sorry to say. But, if you got the right grades, I suppose they might…"

"Yeah, that's not my problem." Wilhelm grumbled, not angry but disappointed. "I don't care whether the school's on Mars. My problem is the fact that the school's a frikkin' high school. A high school. Not a college. What's up with this?"

The director took a look at it again. He pointed at a line of text. "Here it says that the school is for grades one through twelve, with a separate college facility and dorm. I've heard of certain schools in Asia having similar systems, to prevent the problem of having too many schools- well, with your grades, why would it pop up if it was a bad school? Take a sneak peek; see what it offers on the college programs. It might have a good graphics art program you'd enjoy!"

Wilhelm sighed, taking back the leaflet with an angry snap the director overlooked. Mikogami Academy, it was called. Best and safest school in all of Japan, it said. Renamed, it said, from another name it didn't discuss, to exemplify great leaps in education brought forth by the headmaster, Tenmei Mikogami. Already, Wilhelm was getting some of that narcissistic vibe coming from it. He continued reading it from the heck of it, though the cheesy cover with smiling students was starting to give him doubts.

The college programs were in the back. His eyes shot straight for the arts, trying his best to ignore any subject that could somehow be related to high, middle, or elementary school core classes. It was hard to, seeing how they exemplified those more than others less desirable to the strict, business-oriented Asian populace. But there it was, in all of its 8-size font printed glory: Graphic Arts. Under it, in even tinier text, all Arts students are only required a year in the program to attain a bachelor's.

"You know," he said to the director, who had been, again, off on his own rant, "I think I'll choose this school."

The director blinked. "Wait- that school? But- you only just learned of it, you have to get to know and appreciate a school before you decide- you just can't-"

Wilhelm grinned. He loved seeing a liberal stutter. "None of the other schools interest me. This school has a program that I like. The tuition is- hey, only two thousand dollars a semester, your Social Services people can actually serve me and save their cheap asses some money. Sign me up."

"Mister- I will not tolerate such- such- precociousness!" The bland face the director always wore was gone now, replaced by one of indignation. Wilhelm's grin grew even wider.

"You're obligated to, according to Mr. Obama there-" the younger man pointed to the classic picture hanging next to the director's diploma, as if a forty year old had been responsible for the fifty year old's education. "And I want to go to this school and get out of here. Now, if you wanna go and complain about it, that's fine, but that means me staying here even longer and, if you reject me in not a nice way, bugging your ass till the government starts caring. Which it won't."

The director shuddered. His illusion that he liked kids quickly vanished, replaced by an indignant expression and sputtering lips. Sure, the man got a few delinquents every once in a while that threw the occasional fit or glared sullenly at the official. But no one even dared to assert themselves. Everyone feared this bland little man, for reasons that most likely involved the assurance of the liberal complaining to his superiors and having any naysayers shoved into destitution. Wilhelm possessed no such fear, just blatant boredom.

It took a moment, but the man nodded. "Fine, Mr. Schugen. Fine. Right away. It's your future." It's your funeral. Wilhelm almost laughed. The little man was halfway red and blue, a patriotic American flag right there on his face. "You can always ask nicer, Mr. Schugen. I would've signed you up either way."

Wilhelm doubted that. He had been in the system long enough to know that this guy blamed his "scatterbrains" for "systematic errors" that occurred every so often. Wilhelm had barely known a guy that had left for college- he had applied to one school, and one school only, which Wilhelm only remembered as either the University of New Mexico or New Mexico State University (and no, those aren't the same); the kid later came back bawling about how he had been sent to a community college, one not even in Albuquerque.

From the rumors that circulated amongst both the kids and the staff, and from only the snippets Wilhelm managed to catch, the kid had been rejected only by the director, not the college. When the application came through, the director made the switch by forging everything on the document, and sending the kid to some outskirt and insignificant college. The kid had, apparently, spoken badly of a certain gay person that may have been the director's son (or daughter, since both of the director's children were homosexual and the details were sketchy on the gender point). The director, in his 1st Amendment-hating liberalness, changed the kid's school so he would never succeed. The kid, heartbroken by the news, just hit the streets as soon as his eighteenth birthday passed.

While the director typed furiously on his computer, Wilhelm left. What really made his day was not just the sputtering and humiliating of the director, it was the faces of the other kids as he exited that office as they saw him smiling


	3. Tokyo and an Eccentric Driver

2

Over the Pacific Ocean

Now

"The plane is now reaching its apogee. You may now turn on electronics. Please enjoy the rest of your flight." Those were the words that waked Wilhelm, and he silently cursed the flight attendants for having the speaker so loud. Even under the thickest, fluffiest pillow he had managed to filch from the Social Services center's bedrooms, the obnoxiously normal voice that oozed out so smoothly and orderly that it raised chaos and discord in Wilhelm's brain still seemed to leak through the cotton. By now, he wished he had one of those Beats and an iPod so that he wouldn't have to listen to it. Sadly, Social Services were only kind enough to finance his endeavors, not his possessions.

The pillow was warm and blissful to be between, and the silenced roar of the engines lulled him, but no cloudy sleep fell upon him. He struggled to get back to sleep, screaming at his mind to shut off so that he could time travel without all the science, but sadly, the snores of the woman next to him threw him off that track.

It took about 12 hours to reach Tokyo, as the captain said at the beginning of the flight; 12 hours too many for Wilhelm. All the times he had taken the train from Albuquerque to Santa Fe to get to his job, Wilhelm would refuse to sit and waste away, preferring to pace the length of the train. Sure, people stared at him as if he was a terrorist, and the conductors saw him as a freeloader, but it sure beat writhing in his chair for an hour. However, if he paced an airplane, he'd immediately be singled out as a terrorist and tackled before he could do any "harm."

He popped out of the security of his pillow. The blast of cold air from the air conditioning near shocked him awake, though his grogginess superseded that. The woman next to him, now fast asleep (and, to Wilhelm's amusement, was leaning on the dude next to her, who looked completely awkward in this situation), had apparently thought the airplane was too hot under her fleshy folds of blubber, and put those damn air conditioners up to the max. Wilhelm turned his off.

Raising a hand for the flight attendant, he asked the lady for a shot of water and a sleeping pill. She obliged him on the water, but explained that the airliner didn't give away sleeping pills anymore, due to health and safety reasons, which Wilhelm could only decipher as "spontaneous dying may occur." He took the water with a grimace and a thank you, then slunk back into his seat as far as he could with only an inch or two for his tall frame to sink into.

He looked out the window, and voila, obviously what he didn't expect, there was the Pacific Ocean under them, and a few wispy clouds interspersed as well, though it seemed as if the skies were clear today. Nothing much of interest was happening, no matter how much he tried to imagine an enormous sea serpent leaping out of the water in an attempt to swallow the plane only to miss and fall back into the sea. God refused to oblige, and the water remained flat and clear.

He did wonder if they would see any islands while they flew, but his forcefully suppressed memory of science class resurfaced to remind him that, when flying to Japan, pilots would take a curved route that bent northward to avoid flying a longer distance. Would everything disappoint him so?

Perhaps not, for as soon as he drunk his water, his eyes began to droop, just as he was lamenting on how he only woke up for just a few damn minutes, as if God was seriously trying to piss him off.

 

The coffee in Tokyo was good. Overloaded with creamer and sugar, along with flavoring, injected caffeine, and GMOs, but that is why Starbucks is so amazing. One can find it anywhere in the world, like some café version of McDonalds (no matter how much McDonalds wanted to be one), and finding a shop, any kind of shop with English-speaking people, was a Godsend. Seeing that title the first time in Tokyo, that pure, English title in bold letters, with that random mermaid symbol right next to it, it was as if Jesus came from heaven to personally give Wilhelm a shot of espresso and a delicious mocha frappuccino. Sure, Wilhelm could speak Japanese just fine, he had studied his ass off to do so, but the way everyone here spoke the language, with weird inflections and chopping off entire prefixes, it was impossible to understand a word! English was a language of compromise, removal, and replacement, it could allow for some maneuverability, but Japanese was a super-formal language that required super-formal arrangement. He didn't get it.

Being the only white guy in a whole-country radius did help, a bit, though Wilhelm's mane of red hair threw people off a bit whenever he talked to them. They hadn't seen such a hair color like that before, most likely, and maybe thought of him as some stupid anime-wannabe from America. But, being so American, some helpful people did switch to English to help him with finding the bag retrieval line and all that, though they gave him the strange looks he would expect if he was some stupid American anime-wannabe.

Wilhelm's admittance letter had mentioned a chauffeur coming to pick him up from the airport, but if the holding up a sign cliché ran true, then the chauffeur wasn't here. Now that he thought about it, though the thought was only a passing one, the brochure didn't have any address on it in case the chauffeur didn't show up and a student had or wanted to take a taxi.

So he waited. He read the first newspaper he could grab, avoiding the American news, then sat down with his drink at the only available table out of a few hundred or so- and he had only grabbed it from a strategy of snatching from the first family that got up and left. Reading, the Tokyo Times were blazing this huge headline, "Destruction in Yokosuka- a hundred citizens killed, near a hundred missing, many soldiers, as of yet uncounted, dead." Pretty dark story, right off the bat. It did not concern Wilhelm, though. Yokosuka was a long way from- Shinjuku? That vicinity? Wherever Wilhelm was, he knew it didn't need to involve him. However, he read on.

For such a devastating headline, it barely had any text to go along with it. It mentioned the deaths, and the destruction entailed, but no cause for the deaths and destruction were discussed. It seemed as if Obama had written this! Cover up, definitely a cover up. Another industrial accident, maybe, from yet another tsunami? Looking around from the edge of the paper, other people who had picked the paper, Times or not, were wearing these horrified expressions. Wilhelm blushed when he realized that though this destruction may not apply to him, but others with family and friends in Yokosuka may be worried sick about whether their confidents were part of that hundred. He folded up the newspaper, and took a long drink to wake himself up.

This airport was huge, so huge the one in Albuquerque couldn't even compare. People rushed in and rushed out in a gushing river of humanity, and the mass of black-haired heads shuffled along like ants. Wilhelm towered above them all, but he still couldn't see anything past three people in front of him. He had already had to dump out his coffee because he'd never be able to drink it in this perpetually shifting crowd without spilling it, and dumping it out was a struggle, since he had to cut through some hundreds of people to get to the bathroom trashcan, and then cut again through another few hundreds. Really, all he was trying to do was go with the flow so as to not get crushed, and find the exit, again (he had already found it while searching for a place to eat and checking if his chauffeur was here, but retracing his steps amongst this crowd did not turn out to be easy).

He asked one lady (who turned out to be a cross dresser, a very convincing one at that, but no woman would be that flat and have a suspicious lump in her crotch) and "she" said to turn left at the next fork, and keep going until it was on his right hand-side. He thanked "her" and got his ass to that left fork as fast as he could.

It was evening here, near three pm, if Wilhelm's pre- traveling adjusted cheap plastic analog watch could be trusted. Being December, the sun was already halfway to resting on the horizon and turning the sky red. The exit faced the parking garage, and the shadow of the garage blocked his view of the city, though the very tops of the skyline's greatest skyscrapers poked out from above the blocky building. Taxis lined up along the entrance's curb, chauffeurs leaning on their respective cars, holding up signs with their client's name, some in Japanese, some in English, some in both, and a smattering of other languages.

And there was his name, a wee bit down the line on the right. The driver had lazily just left it on the ground pointing toward the entrance so he could take a smoke. Wilhelm jogged there to avoid the push of the stream.

The driver, wearing dark Ray-Bans, spoke before Wilhelm was even ten steps away. "Wilhelm Schugen?" he said in an exhausted monotone. The guy spoke without any audible accent, though he clipped the "sch" in Schugen. "I presume?" he continued in English. The man was at least a foot shorter than Wilhelm, but he didn't look at the kid in the eye. He stared ahead unwaveringly. Was he blind?

"Yes, that's me. Are you from Mikogami?"

"You speak good Japanese. Formal, yet you emulate the Tokyo accent well. And yes, I'm here to drive you to the Academy." He took a deep breath of smoke, then let it out in content. He looked up at Wilhelm, and his eyebrows rose, a good sign that he wasn't blind. "Tall, aren't you? You stick out more than a sore thumb among all these short Asians here."

"And you're not Asian?"

"Do I look it?" The driver was average height, maybe a little more, though from Wilhelm's perspective, everyone just seemed short. The guy had a carefully groomed goatee that showed more expertise than what Wilhelm tried to do with his burgeoning beard, and the hair on top of his skull was close-cropped and flattened from the hat which for the present lay on top of the taxi. His glasses blocked his eyes, so Wilhelm wasn't sure if they possessed the Asian signature. In the end, Wilhelm just shrugged. "It doesn't matter, kid. I'm done smoking here, get in the car." He threw the butt on the ground and stepped on it, putting on his hat.

Wilhelm took out his own pack of cigarettes. He switched to English. "Unless you have a no-smoking-in-the-taxi policy, I'm taking my own joint for a little while." He brought out a cheap BIC lighter, and ignited the end of one, sticking the butt in his mouth.

The driver got out one of his own, and spoke in English as well. "Ain't you a bit young to smoke?"

Wilhelm shrugged with his shoulders and his eyebrows. "The cops don't care. I was sixteen when I started, to get the edge off my… problems, and I did it in front of Social Services every day. They never cared. Do you mind?"

The chauffeur shook his head. "No. We can smoke in the taxi, as long as the windows are open. There's an ashtray inside, too. Put your bags in the-" He finally noticed Wilhelm's bag- or lack of it. "That tiny backpack? That's all?"

"And a comfy pillow, too. I think I'll keep it on me." Both driver and passenger got in the car. "How far is Mikogami, again? The brochure doesn't mention where it is, or anything."

The driver took off his sunglasses. "Couldn't let anybody see me without these."

"What the fuck are you-? Never mind that, I asked how far is the school?"

"Oh, only a half-hour from here. It takes a bit of finding, though, especially in a city like this." He nodded, the smoke cloud from his cigarette bobbing up and down. He adjusted the mirror. "You alright back there?"

"I guess so-" Wilhelm stopped.

"Anything wrong?"

"What the fuck is wrong with your eyes?!" The bastard didn't have any, replaced by shining, gaping holes. Was it a trick of the light- then the driver turned around.

"You're one of those kind of people, aren't you? Well, you'll get used to it, eventually. Being raised by humans does get people's racial prejudice up, but that tends to fade away."

"What do you mean? Human? Oh shit, I know where this is going, I'm genre savvy enough to know whenever a person refers to a human as a human, they're obviously aliens or some shit- or they're trolling me. Get real, bro. What's wrong with your eyes?

The driver frowned. He turned back and started the car, skillfully maneuvering the taxi out of the tight parallel park, then headed down the street and into the city. "You'll find out on your own, I expect."

Wilhelm shrugged. "Fine. You like the suspense, I bet." He turned to Japanese. "Can I talk to you for a while? I need to exercise my Japanese, and understand all these dialects. I mean, I could barely understand half a word!"

"Sure. Talk to me."

"I'll ask a few questions to get them out of the way. What's the Academy like? The brochure said it had 'suitable grounds,' which is the vaguest thing I've ever read. Can you enlighten me?"

"There you go again, being all formal. If you want anyone to understand you, you have to understand that sometimes you have to accommodate for other people's accents and dialects. Otherwise, all you'll hear is blah, blah, blah. Basic language math here. That's the only lesson you need." He took a big whiff of his tobacco, blowing the smoke out the window. "And, if you really need to know-" He paused, and turned.

"The Academy is a horrifying school!" He paused for effect. Wilhelm wasn't affected. "Or, that's what I say to every student. I didn't think you'd really be scared by it. The eye thing creeps most kids out. Hell, it creeped the headmaster so much he tried it for himself! Nah, I believe you'll do just fine at the Academy."

"Sure, sir." So this was all an act. Wilhelm should've expected that from the start. The guy was just playing a joke, and the eye thing was just a trick, probably backlight contacts or something. "It's only one year, man," he said under his breath in his own secret language. "Then you're out of here for good."

The taxi went down the streets of Tokyo, and stars started to rise from the sun's opposite horizon.


	4. A Few Months Before- 1: Love Talks

3

Yokosuka, Japan

A few months ago

Kurumu smiled her false smile, struggling in her suffering to stop the sorrowful tears that threatened to flow. Her heart was throbbing, tearing itself apart from within the void that was her soul, the void that gushed bloody tears. The agony of holding them back was almost as hard as seeming happy- almost.

She knew she should be ashamed for not feeling proud for her friend, who had accomplished in a few seconds what Kurumu couldn't in two years. But the pain of watching her love and her friend embrace and… kiss… her heart, as torn as it was, was ablaze, raging and hating, and her claws were near ready to rip that bitch's throat out-

No, no, don't think about it… she's my friend, my friend; I should be proud, proud… Her mind was torn between the two feelings of love and friendship and sheer loathing. What could she do, when one side of her wanted to rip her friend in two, the other wished to remain complacent, and both were so miserable she wished she could herself here and now?

How could Tsukune be so cruel? There was her love, smiling his ignorant grin, laughing as if he was some hero- but had he saved her and Mizore? Where was he? Off and fucking that slut while Kurumu and Mizore fought that psycho lesbian, the one he now called "friend?" While Kurumu and Mizore were butchered and mutilated by the yandere bitch? Where was he? What kind of savior was he? Who cared about some pitiful humans when they could teleported away by Mikogami's powers? Why, in the name of all hell and the Lord of Demons himself, did he fall for that fucking stupid, lowbrow, uncaring-

Stop, stop, stop! She screamed to that blasphemous side of her mind. I hate you, I hate you, STOP IT!

AND WHO ARE YOU SAYING THAT TO? HER?

Kurumu had to wrap her hands around her throat to stop herself from screaming.

YOU KNOW HOW SHE'S TREATED YOU: WITH AS LITTLE RESPECT FOR YOUR FEELINGS AS POSSIBLE.

Kurumu was horrified at hearing her own thoughts blatantly disrespect her friend.

SHE CONSIDERS YOU A NUISANCE. SHE UTTERLY DESPISES YOUR EFFORTS TO WOO THE BOY, AND CONSTANTLY FOILS ANY OF YOUR ATTEMPTS TO GET CLOSE TO HIM. WHAT KIND OF FRIEND DOES THAT? YOU PLAYED FAIR, YOU LET HER DO AS SHE WISHED, AND WHAT DOES SHE GIVE YOU IN RETURN FOR THE ABSTINENCE OF YOUR VERY NATURE? 

She looked up from her personal pool of misery. The bitch was holding hands, holding hands with her love. KURUMU'S LOVE. As if he was hers and hers alone. As if she had won!

WHY LET THE PAIN GO ON? YOU HAVE THE POWER, THE INTENT, THE WILL TO END IT- TO END HER!

But she's my friend! I love her like a sister! A sister! 

YET YOU DOUBT WHETHER SHE FEELS THE SAME. WELL, SHE DOESN'T. LOOK, LOOK AT HER HOLDING HANDS WITH THE BOY YOU LOVE, CARESSING HIM LIKE HOW A WHORE FONDLE'S HER NIGHT'S PAY.

Kurumu's fists clenched, a vein popped out of her temple. She doesn't deserve him. She never worked so hard, day after day. She didn't have to spend every waking moment to attract his attention. She doesn't cry at night when he gets hurt. He defends her, we defend him. What has she done for him?

TURN HIM INTO A MONSTER.

He isn't a monster, he's- God, I don't know what he is anymore! Fouhai did that… needle thing to him, I wonder if… if he's still my Tsukune…

YOUR TSUKUNE? YOU KNOW THE TRUTH, HE HAS NEVER BEEN YOURS. HE AVOIDS YOU LIKE THE PLAGUE. HE BARELY CONSIDERS YOU A FRIEND. IF HE DID, HE WOULD SEE PAST THAT PAPER-THIN SMILE OF YOURS AND COMFORT YOU.

Kurumu grimaced. She was right- that vile, conniving side of her mind was right. Too right. She didn't want to be reminded of the cold and bitter truth. It was the demon she was that spoke to her, the demon that spoke its brutally honest speech; it was the voice that rose from the depths of her psyche to remind her again and again how futile everything was, and to urge her to end that futility. By… releasing that demon.

IT MAKES SENSE TO. WHY NOT?

Yes, why not?

YOU GET THE IDEA. SEE, THE BITCH STOLE HIM FROM YOU, OR THAT'S WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO THINK. BUT YOU KNOW BETTER. HE WAS NEVER "YOURS." HE NEVER CAN BE… UNLESS YOU DO WHAT NO ONE ELSE CAN. MAKE HIM YOUR ONE AND ONLY. YOUR MOON AND STARS. ONE LITTLE SLICE OF THE THROAT, AND YOUR DREAMS, YOUR LIFE GOAL… YOU AND I CAN FILL IN THE DETAILS.

I DON'T WANT TO KILL HER!

KEEP ON LYING TO YOURSELF. I WONDER… HOW MUCH CAN YOU TAKE? HOW LONG CAN YOU LAST AS YOU DECAY IN AGONY GAZING FROM AFAR THEIR LOVE? I HATE IT AS MUCH AS YOU DO, BECAUSE I AM YOU. I FEEL YOUR AGONY, TENFOLD, SINCE YOU HEAP IT ON ME TO ALLEVIATE THE PAIN. I AM NO NARCOTIC YOU CAN TAKE TO LET IT ALL GO. DO YOU SERIOUSLY EXPECT THE PAIN TO FADE AWAY?

The tears burgeoned from the edges of her eye, this time with time with more confidence and intent than a North Korean dictator. She touched her eyes, taking the tips of her fingers away to half-expect blood.

DON'T CRY NOW. CRY ALONE, IN THE DARK, LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO. WEEP, AND NURTURE YOUR HATE WITH BITTER TEARS AND GUILTY BLOOD. WEEP, AND IT WILL TAKE ROOT IN YOUR SOUL; NURTURE IT, AND YOUR HATE WILL MAKE YOUR LOVE TAKE FRUIT. USE IT, AND YOUR HATE WILL MAKE HER TREMBLE IN FEAR, LIKE YOU DID, AS YOU LAY ON THAT COLD, UNFORGIVING FLOOR, BLEEDING AND BREATHING THE ONLY BREATHS YOU COULD TAKE.

I do NOT hate her!

LIAR! YOU TERRIBLE, INSUFFERABLE LIAR! YOU'RE NO BETTER THAN HER; THAT INNER ONE, AT LEAST, ALL POMPOUS AND SECRET-HOARDING. THE OUTER ONE'S TOO STUPID TO LIE.

BE QUIET!

NO! THIS IS YOUR SOUL SPEAKING, YOUR SOUL THAT IS TEARING ITSELF APART, AND MORE BLOOD WILL SPILL WITH EACH SECOND OF INACTION! YOU WILL DROWN IN DESPAIR IF NOTHING IS DONE TO END HER EXISTENCE!

I WON'T KILL HER!

The voice didn't respond. Even though its blaspheming tongue had been silenced, all that did was have Kurumu hate herself more. The emptiness remained, and her strength failed her. It was all she could do to stop those cruel tears.

She knew she should feel ashamed for not feeling proud for her friends. She knew that this sputtering fire that sustained her was slowly going out, while the ever-present darkness of the void crept in, and spoke to her. That voice of the void, it was familiar. When she had first heard it, when she had lost hope lying on the floor, struck down by the sister, its poignant familiarity scared her more than its presence:

STAND UP… AND KILL.

The voice was hers.

She didn't cry. One tear now could kill her.

She would smile, for now, and laugh, as those two had their happy ending. She would put on another mask, as always. She would go back to that school, and pretend to go after Tsukune as whole-heartedly as she did a long time ago, when she was still so blissfully ignorant.

And she would forever depair at knowing he would never love her.

I TOLD YOU SO.


	5. A Few Months Before- 2: Cold Again

4

The streets were ice-cold. The metal railings were freezing, and breath froze in mid-air. Unnatural icicles hung from eaves and awnings and roofs, the ice twisted in horrible shapes of the uncanny likeness of faces in the agony of those lowest bowels of hell, frozen in the black ice of Cocytus along with a taunting and mocking Lucifer himself. A sinister and glittering fog hung low.

Icy claws spread the emulation of the bitterest nights of the most wicked and lengthy winters, screeching like a human against the icy asphalt. Jagged frost covered windows with the grip of frozen talons, cracks forming on their surfaces in such multitudes they threatened to shatter. Faces formed in those cracks: images of the same boy, over and over, smiling a soft smile, a warm smile, a cruel, leering grin. Those with that awful expression did shatter, like a broken memory.

The yuki-onna sang her song. It was haunting, echoing infinitely in the alleys and streets, the notes jumping up and down in a discordant yet melodic tune, a tune that spoke of loss, of rejection, of hate. While love brought it to the tongue, the lyrics, sung in the wintry tongue of her kind, spoke little of love, only the lack of it. The beat, hollow like a drum, were the snow-girl's lagging footsteps. The instruments, cold and harsh, were played by the dragging of her ice claws against the frigid streets.

Birds that soared above settled on the rubble of destroyed skyscrapers that remained untouched by the cold, silently listening to that beautiful, eerie, destitute, awful music. None dared make a sound, lest they disturb the delicate peace and grieving of the song.

Teardrops that froze as soon as they left the eye fell and broke against an uncaring ground. The futility of the act didn't stop the flow, or the song. The snow-girl could choke on her sadness, but the burning tears would freeze and fall, and the music would continue, uninterrupted by any doubts, and new words to express the poor girl's sorrow leapt forth from her heavy heart.

Statues of the boy emerged from the ice to dance with her, begging like she begged for love. She took one offer, from the most complete among the statues. She and him twirled a lonely dance on the ice, their world spinning around them into a blur, so that it didn't matter anymore. Her steps were unsure, and her feet kept slipping- but he guided her, and they became one.

This simple act, of singing and dancing alone, forever, with him, this would satisfy her. To see the love shine in his eyes for all eternity.

But his hands were cold, and hard. These weren't the hands that held her, that made her feel warmth for the first time.

The statues dissolved into mist. She was alone. By herself. Like always.


	6. What is this Cloak but Lies?

5

Tsukune hugged Moka, and felt like he could never let go. Her hair, her skin, her scent, all of her, he wished to envelop forever. He had lost one Moka… but he loved this one just as much. All the memories, all the smiles… it was still her. Her love had given him the strength to control the monster within. He could still imagine and feel it struggling, growling foul curses, gnawing and beating against its cage, primed to burst out and feed on the flesh of those he cared about, and the blood of humanity.

"Tsukune," Moka whispered into his ear. "I'm so sorry I caused you all this pain. Had I not been so weak, had I not defended you all this time, you might still be whole; we might still be at school, enjoying our lives. We might have made a better world, where youkai and humans could live together… but it seems, because of him, they hate us all the more…"

"Moka, everything that has happened, if what we heard was true, it was inevitable. And besides, the humans hate Alucard; he caused all this. He killed the people of this city today, murdered innocents because of some badly placed blame. To him, all of humanity was a scapegoat for an unknown injustice from oh so long ago. It's him the humans despise, and if they blame us for his wrongdoing, they're just as bad as him." Reluctant as he was, he released himself from that sweet, sweet, embrace. Moka seemed just as hesitant as and more foregoing than he was, almost back to hugging him before the boy could get a firm grip on her shoulders. "Look at me, Moka-san. I love you. You were the one who gave me the strength to persevere in this crazy-ass world of the youkai. You gave me the power to do what's right, to save you, and to stop Alucard from destroying us all. No matter how much pain I had to go through, it was worth it.

"Tsukune!" Moka flew at him to embrace him once again, and with nothing left to say, Tsukune could only oblige to give back. Yes, it is still her.

Yukari, somewhere off to the side, laughed her witchy cackle at the sight of them, clapping her hands with utmost happiness. "I love it when true love saves the day! Whether its young or old, straight or gay. I'm just moved to tears to see the lovers struggles to be resolved and see them finally united in love!" She sighed thoughtfully. "I guess a loli like me never had a chance. I suppose I'll find another threesome to join in, or I'll settle down with a lovely big-breasted girl, magically change my gender, and have a few kids with her. Then again, is this threesome still open?"

Tsukune glared at her. The witch didn't notice, but Moka saw the displeasure in his eyes. "No thanks, Yukari-chan," she said, patting Tsukune's back to calm him down, "Could you leave us alone for a while? We need to talk about things."

"'Talk,' so that's what they call it these days." Yukari giggled. "Don't worry, I'll snuggle between you guys one of these days." She brought out her wand. "I'm off to heal and mind-wipe some soldiers, if they aren't going to act too Puritan on me. Love you guys!" She skipped away, sparks flying from the tip of her magical instrument.

Tsukune felt the burn of disappointment. Try as he might, he really did hate it when other people interrupt his time with Moka. Sometimes, a nasty voice in the back of his mind told him to lash out at those who did... but his better judgement preceded him.

Moka chuckled that adorable chuckle of hers, and that was enough to bring him out of his gloom and bring a blush to his cheeks. "It's good to have such accepting friends that love us enough to respect this space here, between us."

"They should've already gotten the message, so, yeah." Perhaps Moka heard the inflection in his voice, or saw a sparkle in Tsukune's eyes that looked wrong, but her smile wavered for a moment, a movement so quick Tsukune didn't catch it. He looked into her eyes. "It's just... I'm so happy with you here in my arms, Moka. I don't want them to disturb that."

Moka was silent. It was awkward now. Tsukune had thought hugging her could allow them to talk about their love for one another- but maybe it didn't work that way.

They ended the embrace. Moka smiled, the corners of her mouth a bit lower than what Tsukune was used to. "Tsukune, I'm going to help these people."

Tsukune looked at his wounds, bandaged yet still oozing discomfortingly black-and-red blood, and aching on their ragged edges. Several of the bones in his right hand were mangled under a tight splint. He had a monster headache (the pun of which was partially intended), and a bruise the size of his fist was forming on his crown. "You know what, I think I'll stay here. A hug's about all I can do right now."

Moka nodded. "No one can ask you more than what you've already done. Get some rest. Come here." She kissed his forehead. "Don't get kidnapped by some evil organization while I'm gone, okay?" They laughed together.

Tsukune found a bench to sit on, the only one left standing in a lonely, abandoned, decrepit and destroyed park. The medics had finished their work on him. Both the human ones and the youkai ones agreed that he shouldn't stress himself, or do any strenuous "exercise," lest he reopen all of his wounds, again break his bones, and wholly weaken his body.

It was calm here. No soldiers searched for the wounded or dead under the rubble, no youkai raced to erase and replace the humans' memories of Alucard. No birds sang in the trees. No children and laughed and played with their parents. No cars honked in a traffic bustle in the distance.

It was beyond calm. It was empty. Tsukune kicked away a lone piece of rock. It flew quite the distance…

He looked at his broken fist from between the two splints. It barely looked like a fist any more, more like a mush of bloodied skin. The medics said it would take time to heal, though the looks they gave him told him it would be a pretty long time. He had broken it against Alucard's immensely thick armor; he had felt his bones crunching as he put all of his force into piercing a substance harder than any metal. And he had kept punching with that hand, ignoring the fact that he couldn't unclench it anymore, that it was really, really painful. And that was when he had power; now, it throbbed and pulsated with the pounding of his blood, even with the pain meds the medics had given him.

"But we won," he whispered to the air. He could barely believe it, still. The sheer scale of the act bewildered his insignificant human mind. He had destroyed Alucard, he had defeated Fairy Tale, he had gotten the girl. He had saved the world! He, Tsukune Aono, an average, stupid high school student, had saved the entire frikkin' world. Any movie could revel in the glory of saving the world, and in the process make it seem so easy. But the actual feeling of having done so… it was exhilarating, it made him want to jump up and slam a fist to the ground, and create an awesome shockwave like Superman. His body ached at the thought. He couldn't do that, but he could laugh triumphantly and yell, "I SAVED THE WORLD!"

"Don't get a swollen head, boy."

The voice scared Tsukune out of his seat faster than he thought he could in his condition. Sitting on the bench next to where he was the white-robed Headmaster. Chained around his arms and legs were Holy Locks, the locks shaped more like heavy-duty padlocks than the tiny key-chain type that Tsukune had once worn before it broke and didn't need it any longer. Beneath the exorcist's hood, instead of the glowing eyes he usually sported, his eyes were red, reptilian eyes, glaring with a growing impatience and distaste.

"Headmaster- wha- I thought you were dead!" Tsukune could hardly believe it- he had seen the Headmaster die right in front of him! How-

"Dead? Where did you get that notion from?" The Headmaster stared at him as if he was ridiculous. "I am alive as you can well see- though I'd think that you'd have realized by now that I was."

"So- you're not a ghost? An apparition to haunt me or something like that?"

"I'm an exorcist, boy. I destroy ghosts. Haunt you, maybe, but that's just me. And second, I'm a kishin. I can't 'die' in the classical sense; I can go to hell, sure, but my soul would be intact enough to return, unlike… human souls. However, I did not come on my own accord. God saw my death- and sent me packing. Along with Fouhai, since I definitely need a 'friend.' Fouhai was more thrilled than I, since he had been planning from the start to supply enough energy for Akasha and Alucard to die, and then scram to his children and grandchildren, but he had let too much of his power slip, and he died. God wasn't done with us apparently, and here we are, and here I am. For the sake of secrecy, don't tell your other friends- except Ruby- that I am alive. Tell Ruby, but only in secret. I am to be going back to the Academy, as an administrator, but they shall not see me. This is of utmost importance. Do you understand, boy?"

"But, sir, why-"

"Do you understand?"

Tsukune hesitated; it was already strange enough that the Headmaster was back from the "dead," now he wanted Tsukune to only tell Ruby? What did he want, really?

He nodded slowly. "But why come to me?"

"Because you're useful, at the moment. And, as a good headmaster does, I came to you specifically to congratulate you on your efforts, of course- but it seems you've already done that for me." A twinge of something laced his voice, beyond the irritation he showed in his eyes. He mumbled, "I also thought you of all people might have felt… never mind."

The man's voice sounded… restricted, as if he was choking his words back. "Is there anything wrong, sir? I mean, beyond the death thing and all."

"Oh, so you do care. That's just wonderful. I was beginning to believe your kindness only extended to women." He sneered, and his smile reflected razor-sharp teeth. "Boy, I just saw one of my greatest of comrades die right in front of me. Boy, I just spent all my energy protecting you and the others, giving you all the time in the world to destroy Alucard and his "children". The pentacle I used to prevent the ghoul's power from swallowing you is a burnt hole in the ground a half a kilometer wide and three meters deep. The dark powers I evoked to save your ungrateful ass were more than this earth can bear; the taint will last for long past your lifetime's end. I had to have other exorcists bind my demonic nature so as to not encourage the spread of my own taint, and yet the taint spreads. Both remain contained, yet their presence here has made me lose my favor with God, and here I remain, stripped of my power because my idiotic conscience told me to protect one trump card where it could've been easier to let it destroy itself."

Tsukune stared at him. "What do you mean? I thought-"

"You thought, boy, and perhaps that's one of your major sins. You only think about yourself, and you don't even care about yourself. Your body and soul were slowly disintegrating as you fought. It was not "love" as you might think that saved you; love is nothing more than an emotion in the back of your brain that drives you onward, can give you strength, but it does not give you power. I saved you, and the world is better off for it not because you lived, but if you died the ghoul would have risen from your ashes, a hollow shell with a vampire's strength and hunger tenfold. Alucard would've been dealt with, yes, but with our forces and human forces depleted no one would have been able to stop it from devouring hundreds, maybe thousands of humans before I regained my strength and obliterated it. But after it's all done and done, I would still have my powers, those girls that follow you around would stop their bickering, and for the price you paid your death would mean nothing in the long run."

Tsukune fell to his knees. "What? You mean- you would've just let that happen? But- my friends- my parents-"

"We'd just tell your parents that on a trip to Yokosuka, you had been one of the lost. A simple solution with minimum backlash. And your friends wouldn't mind, really. A few years from now, they'd forget about you, or think of you as that one guy they liked back in high school. Right now they would think that you paid the price freely, I could do nothing to stop that, and there would be no hard feelings." He paused. Tsukune looked up at him, the beginning of tears forming at the edges of his eyes. The Headmaster shook his head. "But I did stop it," he growled.

Tsukune wiped away the tears, his muscles popping from the strain of remaining stoic. "I'm sorry for these troubles I've caused you."

Mikogami glared at him, his reptilian eye-slits expanding and contracting. He snorted. "Don't give me your false humility, boy. If you had noticed my trouble, if you had said sorry long before this conversation, I may have believed you. But be it as it may you would only be pitying me either way, not truly sorry for what you've done.

"Boy, being an exorcist is not simply a talent I possess; it is a gift of grace from God. And God being God, he can as easily take it away. I betrayed his trust by using dark magic that I had forsworn long ago, and using it for a very selfish reason."

"What you did for us wasn't selfish. It wasn't selfish to save all those people! If 'God' took away your powers, he has absolutely no idea what he is doing!"

"Spare God the blasphemy, boy, he already receives enough of it from seven billion humans every day. What I did today was selfish, boy, but it is a selfishness even you should know by now."

"I'm not selfish!" The human wiped a tear away. "I try not to be, anyway. I mean, I don't think much of my own needs or wants."

"That only proves one of my earlier points. Everyone is selfish, Aono. The poorest of the poor lust, desire revenge, and possess an inherent greed accompanied by a burning envy of those who have more than them. Those poorest murder and rape more than any other class, and many steal without hesitation. And yet even the rich can be just as selfish despite having everything in the world, as you saw with the demon and his she-demon, trying to avenge injustices whose perpetrators have long been dead.

"Boy do you honestly think I came here to support your mission? Do you honestly believe I am some holy and chaste monk brimming with godliness and good intentions? I am a DEMON!" he spat, fire bursting from his nostrils and his mouth. Under the hood red eyes glowed like burning coals. "I am a demon, boy. I have the faults of a human and the loathing of Satan, unless I am shackled by God. Even the Devil himself trembles at his name, but does that change our baser natures? While you may believe I am here only as a convenience for you, my history is one of blood! My conversion to the Light was not some hole in time you can ignore! I used to slaughter humans and throw their bodies into hell, whole! For fun! I delighted in their squirming bodies and tormented screams.

"Boy, I was a monster in the sheerest sense of the word. Many youkai history books paint me clad in this holy man's robe, fighting along Akasha and Fouhai with legion's of my "angels" in the "final" battle against Alucard. They don't mention my demonic past. They don't mention I was a kishin while I ripped apart Alucard's extremities and feasted on his flesh! They don't mention the true nature of his seal, that I had chained him down with countless demons that haunt the earth to this day! I was trying to kill Alucard only because the vampire woman told me so. She threatened to end my hedonistic existence in the most painful by throwing me into the deepest pit of hell, unless  
I fought on the side of good.

"We sealed Alucard, at a price, a price I set myself in my blind rage. I used a piece of Akasha's soul to seal the binding, so whenever I wished I could use all of her as a bargaining chip for whatever I desired. From her family, I would get gold and whores. From the humans, they'd give me anything they want to save their asses. But something unexpected happened."

Silence. Tsukune clambered onto the bench and to Mikogami's side so as to hear every single word. His heart couldn't stop throbbing, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose, in the anticipation that whatever came out of the exorcist's mouth now, they would be the most important words he'd ever hear. It was the worst feeling- they weren't doom bringing words, he knew. But they would be utterly terrifying.

"Boy," the exorcist's voice cracked, "I didn't involve myself in this because I wished to save you or the humans. I didn't come here because I didn't want Alucard to destroy us all. I didn't create the rosary Akashiya wears because I wanted, or even particularly needed to seal hers and Alucard's powers, to link her to her mother, or even to protect her. I didn't start all of this because I was good.

"I came here to kill Alucard for a soul. I made the rosary for a face. I came here to save the woman I loved."

He turned his face, and Tsukune's heart stopped. Gone were the eyes full of hate. His face, covered in scars and new wounds, possessed the brown eyes of a human. "Boy, we have more in common than you might think, or like. We crashed into something beautiful, something terrible. We gained much, we lost much. We were both selfish. We even fought Alucard." He chuckled, a sound that barely resembled the hollow and cruel cackle Tsukune thought he knew. "I suppose, in the end, I saved Akasha, though in a way I wish that wasn't. And now she's gone. Again. And this time, even God can't get her soul back from where she's gone. But I suppose…" the resentment crept back into his voice, and his eyes flared a demonic red once more, "not everyone gets a happy ending."

And he was gone.


	7. The Academy Approaches

6

Now

"-and yet this movie bombed despite it being this big-ass budgeted, super-badass three-hour flick of robot versus giant monster action!"

"No way."

"It did! Everyone who did watch it loved it, it got rave reviews, but no one wanted to rake up a bit of bravery and a couple of bucks to try something new."

"Kid, I'm still wondering why anyone watches Japanese movies anymore. Have you seen the crap these people produce? They stink worse than a roadkill skunk. Terrible acting, loose and confusing plots with more holes than Swiss cheese in an effort to emulate anime storylines. Every time I'm forced to watch even the commercials in theaters I cringe in pain, and I leave with this bitter taste in my mouth."

"Yeah, I saw one of those. Worst piece of shit I've ever seen in my life. They fill them with lame spectacle and fluff like I've never seen before. And then I saw Godzilla. It was stop-motion, and it was thirty thousand times better than these movies! Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Japanese culture has reached a stagnation point where it can do nothing but produce anime. Sure, anime can be a deft and interesting art form and a good source of entertainment, if done right, but very often producers sacrifice creativity and originality for marketability. They barf up sickeningly cute characters and annoying voice actors and call it good."

"I agree, kid. America is getting better at this, I know that, but they've still got so much bad stuff under their belts as well… makes me wonder why anyone goes to the cinema these days." The driver tapped the ashy tip of his cigarette into the ashtray. "Buckle up, kid. Were close, but the rest of the way is a tad bumpy."

The sun was already halfway down where it would rest under the horizon. Stars rose from the city, and the million of lights that were Tokyo lit one by one, outshining the stars. The sounds of the city were distant, now, though one could still hear the occasional honk of a horn stuck in the dense traffic. The driver had taken the route around the city, so that the suburban jungle slowly became thicker and thicker as time passed, so that now they lay in the heart of suburbia. It had taken Wilhelm a while to actually recognize the place as such. Instead of the low-topped brown adobe houses with bland, unkempt xeriscaping or the occasional weed-lawn of back home that straddled the sides of streets, these Japanese houses resembled apartments so much Wilhelm didn't even realize they weren't in the city. They were concrete two-stories tall buildings and not much else, unless a brave, hardworking soul had managed to put up flower pots or a few raised beds.

"Kid," the driver said, a touch of amusement wreaking strange havoc on his monotone, "I'm glad we didn't drive through the city, else I'd have a pool of your drool soaked into the carpet to clean up."

"Shut up! I'm interested, that's all."

"Mhm, of course you are. Kid, your eyes are so damn wide I bet anybody that happens to look out their window right now would see these two shining orbs in the dark and immediately say, 'Eh, just another American.'"

Wilhelm had to laugh at that.

They combed through several neighborhoods at a surprisingly good pace. The sun was almost set now, and this early, though it would have to be expected in the wintertime. The thirty minutes the driver had proposed in the beginning had only just passed, which Wilhelm realized had passed extremely fast. Why would it do that? Usually, for him, time seemed to drag on…

The taxi turned off into a construction site. Wooden beams formed the bare-bone frame of another house, and not much else had been put into the building. A few porta-potties stuck out like 2001's lost monoliths here and there, alongside beams yet to be placed. Tire tracks of heavy trucks showed that the workers had only recently left.

Wilhelm looked around. An overpass behind the brick wall that surrounded this whole neighborhood still sung with the rush of cars. He lit another cigarette. He also noted a tunnel going under the overpass right next to the unfinished house.

"That's the last turn, kid," the driver said as he noticed from the dash mirror Wilhelm eyeing the tunnel. The glowing-eyes thing that the driver seemed so stubbornly insistent on keeping still creeped Wilhelm out, so he kept his gaze focused outside the window. "Beyond it is our destination, the Academy. You buckled up? Because that tunnel's quite new, and the ground's uneven because the workers haven't laid down any asphalt yet. In fact, it's downright crazy."

"So the Academy is in the middle of suburbia? No wonder it was cheap."

"I never said it was. I said it was beyond the tunnel." He turned on the road into it.

Wilhelm gave him a look for answers, but none came. He sighed in slight exasperation, but he attempted to buckle up. The keyword being "attempted." He hadn't actually been in a car before, and this buckle thing he had only heard of. He grabbed at the strap at his shoulder, vaguely comprehending the concept of the belt and clip, but before he could understand it was too late; the car slipped into the tunnel, and immediately they were engulfed in darkness, as if the light from the outside had been swallowed, or rather pushed out, the light from the entrance still there but not entering.

Wilhelm stuck his head out the window. Ahead of the taxi, the darkness went on and met at a pinpoint of light. When he moved his lips to get a better grip on his cigarette, he accidentally let it slip. The driver saw. "Grab it, kid, grab it before it-" but it had already flown away.

"Damn, that was my last one!" He murmured, slinking back down his seat. He looked at the insides of his empty box. "It's funny how one realizes that once you finish these, you just spent three-fifty of thirty minutes of your life down the toilet." He prepared his arm to also throw it out the window, but the driver caught his arm by twisting his through the miniscule crack between his chair and the car wall.

"Kid, don't do it. Don't make me explain."

"Okay, I got it, you don't need to put your panties in a bunch." He put the box back in his pocket, and the driver released him.

A minute passed before the driver's warning came true- though bumpy wasn't the best word for it. Dangerously rigorous perhaps better defined it, though by the time Wilhelm hit his head against the ceiling, it was the forming bruise, not imagery, that was on his mind.

The pinpoint of light grew quickly, but the tunnel grew no brighter with it. The terrain underneath the car did change, and the ground turned Wilhelm into a ragdoll as it tossed him around the backseat. "You said it was asphalt, not stalagmites!" He yelled over the cacophony of bangs and bumps.

"I did warn you!" the driver said back, keeping the car in a straight line despite the turbulence. "I forgot to mention the fact that this is really shittily paved!"

The taxi nearly flipped onto its back as it tripped over the last bump of the tunnel. The leap threw the car what felt like three feet in the air before it crashed onto the ground with a resounding and final clanging of internal parts and the people within the cabin.

"Phew. We made it through that one. Kid, we're here. Take your tiny sack and haul yourself out."

"Ha ha. I think I'd rather stay under this pillow for now and refrain from movement. I've got a bruise on my head that needs some TLC before I do anything more. My high wore off, too, and we both know the repercussions of that. Go on without me!"

"Nice. I'm not going to drive you up there. The car's broke. You heard that, right? So get out before I make you."

"Ooh, I'm so scared. I might as well run before the real pain comes." The pillow really was comforting, and against Wilhelm's bruises it was narcotic. But life called to him in a monotone. While not the most motivating of life's many voices, it sounded pissed enough as it slammed the car door and grumbled curses and murmured dark things about Japanese tires that Wilhelm could only grin and respond.

The driver searched in the open trunk, unearthing a horde of assorted rubbish. "People think they can get away with stashing their crap in my taxi," he explained, "and since most of my passengers are kids, you wouldn't believe the stuff that leaks from their suitcases or happens to 'fall' from their hands." Wilhelm could believe it; he saw more than one pair of panties and a bra, and of course thousands of brightly colored candy wrappers.

The driver saw him still standing there. "What are you doing? Go up the road, and the school is after the first path you find."

"And what do I do then? Hang around until a security guard tackles me?"

"I would think they went over this with you on the phone. You go to the Headmaster in Administration, didn't you know this?"

"Nope. They did talk with my Social Services director, but I don't think he likes me very much for unknown reasons. He didn't tell me much, besides a too-hearty goodbye as he kicked me out of the orphanage."

"Well now you know. It was great talking to you, Schugen, much more interesting than the other kids I drag here. But you have priorities, and I have mine." He took out a spare tire from beneath the mounds of trash, and gathered into the crook of his free arm some tools as well. He and Wilhelm glanced at the mangled back tire. "I am never taking that way again." He said finally.

Wilhelm put out a hand after the driver had placed his equipment down and closed the trunk. "Can I have your name, man? I might need to call you if the schoolwork drives me insane."

"You will need that ride, I guarantee, one way or another. The Academy sends kids off on all sorts of crazy things, even college kids like you." He took Wilhelm's hand and shook it. "It's Tavares Perez." He released the other's hand.

"Cool." So the driver was Hispanic. He didn't look it at all, or sound it.

Then Wilhelm realized- "When did we- how the fuck are we besides the ocean?" Beyond the cliff that hugged the street they now stood on was, as the student said, the ocean. Blackish-red under the dusky sun, the waves were roaring and crashing violently against the cliffside as if a particularly bad storm was brewing, yet all day and even now, there was not a single cloud in the sky. (Then again, was the ocean always like this? Wilhelm had only the general impression of an ocean and how it worked. He lived in a desert, remember?) "Isn't Shinjuku, like, west? Away from the ocean?"

Perez seemed too busy cursing under his breath and fixing the tire to notice.

Wilhelm almost kicked him to get an answer, but thought otherwise. Instead, he tugged himself up the street, backpack and comfy pillow in tow, staring at the ocean all the while, utterly and profoundly confused.

 

There were a few explanations for the condition of the grounds. Either all these trees that comprised the forest along the path were dead, and the groundskeeper sucked or was nonexistent; or the groundskeeper was really good at raking leaves so that none remained on the forest floor, and just really sucked at weeding; or the fallen leaves had rotted quickly and the weeds were their successors, and he groundskeeper sucked or was nonexistent.

Whether the groundskeeper sucked or otherwise, the trees, an odd mix of mix of tangled and bent oaks, birch, a familiar cottonwood or two, and other trees that Wilhelm didn't know or really care about, stood bereft of all their leaves. They shared the floors that flanked the raised-dirt road with mobs of grossly green, petulant weeds. None of them were New Mexican, clearly, or of any planet Wilhelm knew of; some had weird, bulbish fruit hanging on their stems, or fleshy blossoms that, oddly enough, seemed to smile at him with their bone-white fronds.

There were already people here, and there probably had been for a while now. A very fresh burrito stuck out of the end of an overflowing trash can that stood on the side of the path. Wilhelm picked up the rubbish that had spilled, then pushed all of it down so that it fit nicely. He wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty, but the residue he wiped on the bark of a tree.

To any other person, it would be weird to see him of all people clearing up litter. To him, it was natural to do so. He had slept on enough streets to fell sickened by the kinds of disgusting shit people leave behind. A little self-satisfaction beat ignoring the problem that lay everywhere.

Wilhelm was wearing a jacket, but here, he felt as if he didn't need it. It wasn't too cold, but it wasn't warm at all. It had been shivery in the city, -9 degrees Celsius according to one corner store the taxi had passed. But this was exactly room temperature, give or take a few degrees, without any wind to add a chill. The sensation was… unnerving, as if something was stifling the heat to this point.

He kept his jacket on.

 

The school was HUGE. Enormous. Wilhelm had seen that one high school in Rio Rancho while on a trip to a science fair (his teacher forced him to, okay?), the one with the fancy almost all-glass exterior that stretched a mile long. This school surpassed that by a large margin, perhaps two or even three times that. It barely passed for a school at all, more like an overly large mansion that stretched for as far as the eye could see in either direction, or at least until the view was obscured by encroaching trees.

The school was an oldish building, a good hundred years old by Wilhelm's estimate, judging by the quality of the bricks and the overgrowths of vines that adorned its surface. Strangely, the building appeared Victorian, like that manse from Downton Abbey (he wasn't into the show, the show just happened to be on when nothing else was, and it was pretty interesting) instead of Japanese-style, which would be unusual if it was as old as Wilhelm thought it was. Beside the two main entrance doors, were the golden-emblazoned kanji of YOUKAI ACADEMY, the name which would mean the driver had driven him to the wrong place, or this was the Mikogami Academy and "Youkai" Academy was the old name and the sign hadn't been fixed. The term "youkai" rang a bell in Wilhelm's head, but he wasn't really familiar with it. He might've read it in a Japanese-to-English dictionary, but he doubted it. Must've been another headmaster, then, or some other self-important schmuck who happened to name the school after themselves.

A freezing wind blew from the path. Wilhelm squinted down the path, though in his mind he realized there was nothing there and he was only acting like a stupid horror movie heroine. It was only a breeze from the night sea. The door's windows, revealed light behind them, and hopefully it meant there was air conditioning. H went inside.

"And here I am, back in hell."

The decrepit exterior of the building hid this updated interior of polished floors with tiles arranged in tedious designs, those weird textured walls, and yellow fluorescent lighting, just like any other school in the world. It reminded Wilhelm a bit of Albuquerque High, though that place was a crapsack compared to anywhere else. If he saw a short, Hispanic janitor, he wouldn't be surprised at all. In fact, he would face-heel-turn himself out and move to a place without institutions like these. Maybe Mongolia; it was nice there, he supposed, though appallingly devoid of civilization besides a hut every thirty miles and a few reindeer.

The administration of this place had, indeed, taken the time to look down to note that the school was, what do you know, quite big, and viable to get confusing at times, so in the middle of the vast entry room was a mall-style map, garishly colored squares and all. It was five-sided, but each map on each face was the same, though labeled with thousands of tiny notes in a myriad of different languages. The front-facing map had all the basics: English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, French, Spanish, and German. The other maps had all sorts of crazy symbols and words. There were even labels in Dwarvish, the Lord of the Rings kind, distinguished from Viking because Wilhelm could read the Dwarvish (nerdily enough), but the Viking was, well, Viking.

The school layout was straightforward, if chopped up into multitudes of classrooms that it consisted of. Two wings, left and right, had numbered squares on each edge to represent a classroom or the occasional janitor's closet, though there were many of those to keep up with the cleaning of a place on this scale. At the end of the left wing there was a concert hall that doubled for lectures, the end of the right had a cafeteria that extended to the outside. Behind the school was the college, a much smaller building, though still relatively large. Besides the school to its right were dorms, though they were only indicated, not displayed. The administration's office was on the second floor, a caution note said, and locations where stairs were were displayed as zigzags, the nearest being off to either side about fifty feet, as Wilhelm could see. With extreme prejudice, he chose the one to the right.

Looking up, the school had a second "floor," but the structure was more like a mall, with open tiers with bridges to cross spans over the pit that was the first floor. Looking on his own level, a few lights in the classrooms were on, though only a few, speaking of the date and the hour. While going down the hall, he just couldn't help himself from veering off to the side to peek.

The first one he saw, a teacher was napping. On her desk. Equipment thrown carelessly to the ground, she cuddled in a fetal position, her face blissful and content. He was so close to knocking on her door, but he stopped himself. The woman had these wicked-sharp fingernails, and Wilhelm preferred to keep his face intact.

The second room wasn't as bright as he thought. There was only one light on, the lamp on the teacher's desk. A single person sat in the far back, way in the dark that Wilhelm could only see a brief outline. The figure had their head cradled in their arms. They did nothing else, so Wilhelm moved on.

The last lit room, one just after the stairs, had a light in it, but there wasn't much point to it because of all the books that blocked it. The kanji on their spines read "Calculus Grade II," "Mirrors with Chemistry," "A Plus-Sized Analysis on Addition," and a host of other hellish titles that warned Wilhelm to turn right around and hurry up the stairs.

A second-floor map rested on the wall immediate the stairs, and much to Wilhelm's chagrin, the administration was in the left wing, above the concert hall. Fate has quite the sense of irony, it seems.

A few classrooms on this floor were lit as well, and like those on the bottom floor, their contents were uninteresting and unnecessary to inspect. A few teachers was all, and all were too entrenched in work to look up at the passing shadow.

It was a damned long way to the other side of school. His guess at three miles turned out to be true- and the hallway went on and on, a road of an off-white tile and badly lit hell that brought forth terrible recollections of "learning," leftist indoctrination, an long treks of trudging through crowds of short people (Which was similar to wading through a river that came up to his stomach, albeit much more chatty and annoying.)

He did reach the office, an effort that ate up thirty minutes of fast walking and a candy bar he had bought from a vending machine. The candy was one of those fail-brands that the Japanese had all over the place. The kanji on its wrapper had been so lumpy and childishly distorted it had been hard to translate: Oni-chandesu! De-Ricious (Wilhelm couldn't help but translate it that way) Choco-Crunch Turbo! or something thereabouts. It wasn't crunchy at all, rather gooey instead, and its off-chocolate flavor was somewhat disturbing, but it passed as food, which was all that mattered to his empty stomach.

Tossing the wrapper, a full-mouthed Wilhelm entered the office.


	8. Suspicions of the Exorcist

7

The room wasn't as Wilhelm expected in a school like this, but he knew its type. There were three main office types, with subtypes and all the like, but three main ones: the Freud, a very comfortable room with big comfy couches, soft lights, and bookcases, meant to make the officer and officee feel familiar and calm; the Principal, a very uncomfortable and claustrophobic room with a big comfy swirly chair for the officer only, and miniscule kindergarten chairs for the officee. On the side would be a few bookcases, but these would be filled with thick tomes like War and Peace alongside insidious volumes such as Capital Crime and Capital Punishment and that copy of Twilight the officer's preteen daughter gave them. The whole effect is to make the officees small, weak, and inferior, unable to change their pitiable fates as the officer proclaims their self God so they may exact unholy and dogmatic judgment; and then there was the Dumbledore, otherwise known as the CEO, immensely large rooms, with vast bookcases, merely meant to display their awesome power.

The director's office had been an atheist principal's office-type: bland, self-serving, diminishing of the officee. This one was a full-blown CEO or a Super-villain Inner Sanctum: a cosmic, hollow dome structure, an office that could easily be fulfilled in less space, since there was only desk and several bookcases that flanked the furniture. The whole room was jet marble or a similar stone, more likely something lighter if this room was on the second floor.

Being a vast, stone room, even the tiniest of sounds echoed back and forth into a whispering cacophony that took several seconds to fade. Wilhelm's chewing, his sneakers hitting the floor,, and the scratching of (who he supposed was) the Headmaster's pen were exacerbated and fused into this endless symphony, splitting into tinier and tinier gossamer notes.

Still chewing (this candy bar was a tough bastard), Wilhelm sat down at the comfy chair in front of the desk, crossed his legs, sat back, and said, "I'm here."

The Headmaster wore this white cloak, the hood adorned with a black cross. Obviously, he was a Japanese Catholic priest or a pastor of some obscure Protestant sect, maybe even a Satanist. Then again, those could be his PJs. It was nighttime, so why not? Though they would pretty nice PJs, considering the cloak shimmered in a way only silk could.

The Headmaster did not look up, but, in Japanese, he spoke, in a monotone quite similar to that of Perez the driver, though with its own personal inflection, as voices go. "Wilhelm Schugen. I expected you to be later." He wrote one last sentence on his current form, flicked it away into a pile of other papers, then reached into a desk cabinet. He pulled out a thin file and opened it. "The average high school freshman tends to have a thicker file than this, Mr. Schugen, especially a straight-A student like you. A senior thesis, standardized test records, all excellent, but that's all we have in here. No IEP when a boy like you could have easily gone into the Gifted Program, no report cards from elementary school. Middle school's I have yet to collect, but I do doubt they'd be very impressive size-wise. Besides these you lack much of your history."

"In case you haven't noticed, I have much of a lack of parents to deal with that kind of stuff. Social Services weren't going to help me that much, either." Wilhelm didn't need to be reminded of this. Again. He didn't need to be reminded that no one cared about the circumstances that brought him to insignificance. He swallowed the candy bar as fast as he could; keeping it in his mouth severely distorted his Japanese. "If you look in my file, you'll also see that I'm a ward of the state, that my parents dumped me because they were too lazy to care. It's on all my papers. Hell, I wrote about it in my senior thesis."

"No way, it's not as if it's my responsibility to read it or anything." Wilhelm almost smiled; he decided he liked this guy. To be sure, he checked the plaque at the front of the desk, and this guy was indeed Tenmei Mikogami. Tenmei Mikogami closed the file, his face still angled downward, and brought to the floor a very thick, one the size of several War and Peaces. Wilhelm heart and butt sank in his chair, the smiling shapeshifting quickly into a bizarre frown.

"I kept this handy because I've heard of your impertinence. You're quite famous for it. You're the one who flipped off Candidate Obama the day he visited Rio Rancho High School. You've got more 'referrals' than the stupidest thug, but you have never crossed the line, or have been found crossing it. Mouthing off to teachers, slandering fellow students, smoking on campus, amongst other offenses. I heard, however, from a little birdie that this file can make you shut up. It works."

Wilhelm cursed the director under his breath; it could only be that bastard director who lipped about it, because only that bastard and other select… professionals knew what that file was, its contents. He squirmed in his chair, the soft, cool leather transforming into a bed of hot knives pointing onto his backside.

"It's not the most enjoyable document, either… disturbing, actually. It's hard to see how you'd get anywhere in life dragging this behind you. Half the employers in the world would reject you, and the other half would hire you but shudder at the thought of keeping you around. This won't stop you from going to college, of course, but the reason these contents exist must make life difficult, but I can only guess at how much.

"When I was first reviewing you, I wondered, how does Wilhelm measure up to my standards? Going to our high school is one thing, for its not also s required part of life, but in our system, we put our students a step ahead from where they were before. We expect the best from our students, but we accept varying levels of intelligence and… temperament. Our college is different. It's a high standard school, else we wouldn't have sent for you. But this world needs mature people, not punks like you. Your intelligence is top notch, of course, but your attitude is… dismal. And, the fact that this file exists as such a large entity concerns me deeply.

"Since I've already used your money, and you're already here, I won't reject you. I want your promise that you won't stir up any trouble. This last year has been tumultuous for all of us at the Academy, due to unforeseen circumstances. If similar happens again, you don't want me to find out you're the cause of it."

Wilhelm could guess at what the Headmaster would do if he managed to piss the old man off. He grit his teeth, his eyes flicking from file, to man, file, to man. His left eye twitched.

What could cause so much trouble that he'd be worried that Wilhelm would do anything to cause it again? He struggled to recall if the newspaper mentioned any accidents involving the Academy. He had read the whole of Tokyo Times today, and he didn't think it talked about any school, much less this one. Unless of course, the events that transpired here had something to do with another catalytic incident…

"Does this have to do with what happened in Yokosuka?"

Mikogami didn't look up, but the miniscule flinch of his head made Wilhelm's guess bang-on. He continued, "What does something in Yokosuka have to do with a school in Shinjuku? They're quite a long way apart."

Another fidget, this one more noticeable. In a softer voice, the Headmaster replied, "An earthquake in Yokosuka killed several of our Japanese students' relatives. Grief has raised strife among the student body, and several fights arose. We don't want similar violence in our school this year."

Wilhelm shrugged, nodding as if he understood, but on the inside shook his head in disbelief. That had to be either the most paper-thin lie he had ever heard, or the lamest truth. Fights? That qualifies as trouble? In Albuquerque, when a gunfight happened, it was Tuesday; when a fistfight occurred, it was 1 o'clock. They weren't so bloody bad that the Headmaster would have to be so grim about it.

"Mr. Schugen, I did not hear a promise."

Wilhelm hesitated. He didn't see how he could get caught up into anything involving Yokosuka or anybody involved with the province. He intended on avoiding pretty much everybody. "Sure, I promise I won't start anything. Emphasis on 'start.'"

Mikogami raised his hood a slight margin, so that wet glare of his eyes could be seen. He let the silence stretch for a moment, then said, "Good. College begins a few days later than when our high school does, because of certain delayed teaching preparations, so don't wake up and wind up in an empty building just because you saw some kids leaving. Your government has a surplus of your scholarship money, it appears, and being the great guy I am, I'll give you a small percentage of it each month as an allowance, seeing as you have no other source of income."

Wilhelm's eyes widened, and he perked up in his chair in the blink of an eye. "Holy mother of Jesus Christ, you mean th- sorry, sorry, that was English- you mean that? Seriously? I get money for being here?" He could hardly believe it, and his voice held a grain of salt as he wondered aloud, "Why?"

"It's the least I can do with you having your… predicaments. The government will only see it as being used for books, your medications, and other supplies, amongst a host of other things that can be used as excuses. We are strict here, Mr. Schugen, but we are not so strict that we would not provide for those who are less fortunate."

Wilhelm stared. He didn't understand. Why would they care? Why would they care whether he was poor and destitute? Why? "Uhhh… thank you, Headmaster…" That was all he could think to say.

"You are welcome, Mr. Schugen. Tomorrow, go to the nurse's office on the first basement floor to pick up your prescription. Tonight, go your dormitory, the one nearest the school. Tell your name to the girl at the front desk, and she will give you your ID card and your room number and key.

"Have a good school year."

As Wilhelm left the office, he pondered those last words. The man hadn't been sarcastic when he said it. He had been honest. A first from any authority he had had contact with.

Before he exited the door, he took a last a glance at the file, then shut the door behind him.

 

Ruby came out from behind the bookcases as soon as she heard the snap of door as it closed. 'What a strange fellow,' she thought. His behavior was… off, as if he was making his personality up as he went along. One second, he'd be surly and mean, the next he'd be withdrawn and quiet, then he'd be all cocky. He's a very reactionary person, I guess one could say. 

She brought a book on monsters to Mikogami. He mumbled thanks, but didn't open it. "Why did you lie to him," she asked nonchalantly, "about the Alucard incident in Yokosuka? Everyone who isn't human knows what really happened."

Mikogami sighed. It wasn't his usual sigh, a worried puff of air. This was the sigh of an old man. "That's the problem, Ruby. He believes he's human. Hell, he thought the Academy was in Shinjuku!"

"He is a youkai, right? I mean, Tsukune was a happy accident, but the school sent for this kid. They wouldn't send it to a human."

"No, I wouldn't. I sent for Schugen personally, though from what I've seen and heard he's only read the brochure… the letter I sent was much more informational." He wringed his hands back and forth, rubbing old scars and new ones. He sighed the strange sigh again.

Ruby touched his shoulder delicately. "You're exhausted, Tenmei-chan. I can make some tea for you. We have some Jasmine, or that fancy Pearl stuff-"

"I'm not exhausted!" Mikogami snapped. Ruby removed her hand. "It's the chains, Ruby, not me. I am weak now, and that makes it hard to move without trembling." He paused. "There's something else, too."

Ruby caught a glimpse of a twitch in the Headmaster's eyes, glancing toward the ponderous file, and she knew. "Does it have to do with Wir- Wiru- Wirihihuher-"

"Wilhelm."

"Right. Schugen-san." Ruby saw that Mikogami's hands were turning purple from clenching. She pursed her lips, then said, "I guess I'll make that tea, then."


	9. An Icy Shadow

8

The aluminium can crunched loudly under Wilhelm's feet. He cursed to the bitter wind, and murmured of the disgusting populace that leaves behind their junk for the poor to dispose of. After he threw it away, he spat onto old footprints, the chewing tobacco he had found in the depths of his backpack staining his saliva deep black, the color of blasphemy.

The sun had already set, night had fallen in its place; the "ocean" wind rose with its descent. Like a tortured soul it howled, and it whistled a hollow song as it ran through the trees. Sparse notes made it almost like discordant music, as if the trees were a recorder and the wind the breath of a crazed kindergartner. Perhaps it was Wilhelm's imagination, but if he let his ear and mind drift, it really did sound like singing. Some kid with a radio set to blare in the dorms?

He felt something settle on his face, a pat of cold. "Snow?" Even in New Mexico, despite common belief, it did rain, and sometimes during winter it even snowed. But this flake was the size of the pads of Wilhelm's thumbs. Picking it off his face (and it did not break), he could see every detail, every infinitesimal branch of icy crystal. Another fell. Very quickly, it accumulated into a whole deluge carried by the wind to land straight on his face.

"This thin-ass jacket ain't gonna fix it," he mumbled in his secret language. Testing, he took it off, and put it back on; it was just as cold either way. The singing seemed to intensify according to the gale, though it was still quiet and distant to the lone listener's ear. "And here I was, picking up some trash, and Mother Nature decides to be a bitch to me." More snow swept into his face, and it began to accumulate on the ground in small little piles of crystalline powder. "Yeah, set the blizzard on the poor kid, will you?"

A crunch. He spun around.

Wilhelm could feel the pair of eyes staring at him from the cover of darkness. His shoulders tensed, and that sixth sense that one gets when something unseen is before oneself tickled his nose. This was no random passerby, he surmised on the spot, if they put so much effort into remaining hidden. Someone was purposefully following and watching him.

He smirked. He liked playing this game, having played both roles as watcher and the watched once or twice each. In the backstreet alleys of Albuquerque, it would usually be a Hispanic mugger that followed Wilhelm in the shadows, and it would be a Hispanic mugger that Wilhelm followed in the shadows. It was a fun game; the followed's sixth sense kicked in, the approach of the follower building up into a ticklish agony.

Unless the followed had nothing to fear.

He turned back around. He had played this on a guy once. The bastard was so confused he barely had time to see the fist flying straight at his face. The singing in the wind wavered for a second, but continued.

"It feels like… somebody…" he spun on his heel, pointing into the shadows of the trees, "wants to SELL ME SOMETHING!"

Nothing. No guy with a knife trying to stab him. No guy in a white cloak trying to whack him in the head with a ridiculously large and abhorrent file. He looked behind him so that no horror clichés would come true. Nothing again. When he looked back, a shadow flitted from one tree to another.

He smirked again, spitting out a black wad of saliva. Another trick slipped from his lips. "I know you're there," he yelled over the wind, "no use hiding what I can already see." He stepped into the bare forest, watching his footsteps so as to not step on any bone-frond plants, which he felt were related to Venus flytraps and a bit more than that. "I won't hurt you, if you manage to not piss me off. I just want you to come into the light." He tried to make his Japanese sound charismatic, and he pulled it off pretty well, he thought.

He saw something glisten on the ground. He picked it up. A lollipop, covered in a thin film of dirt. Still watching the tree where the shadow flied to, he uncovered another lollipop, still in its wrapper; he had stepped on it, yet it had not been crushed. Both candies radiated a cold that transcended that of the snow and gale, and steamed within and without of their wrappers like liquid nitrogen. He saw the reflection of the moon upon two eyes that floated in the darkness. "What the hell are these?" He yelled to the shadow. "Are they drugged? Are they just tasty?" He unwrapped the covered one. The shadow fidgeted behind its tree. Wilhelm's grin grew wider, moving his head to the light of the rising moon so his teeth shone. "Don't want me having it? Don't even want to share it? Is it really that good? From a fellow addict to another, I don't mind experimenting, if they are."

He stuck it in his mouth, and with a recoil of his tongue and a suck of his cheeks, he spat the candy out. "Holy shit, what is this stuff?" The lollipop did not feel cold in his mouth, or hot if it was some strange inverse. It was so fucking sour, he felt as if head would implode if he went on. "Eugh, how do you stand this stuff? It nearly burned a hole straight through my tongue! Is that how you get off, or something?" He was sick of the game, now. He threw the candies at the shadow, each hitting with a satisfactory crack. "Throw those out when you're done!"

Abruptly, the wind stopped. The singing abated and faded away entirely. The snow that had fallen… was gone. It hadn't melted, because the ground was dry.

At this point, the shadow was gone. The feeling of eyes upon him had disappeared. At this point, Wilhelm decided it was a good time to get back on the path and quicken his pace.


	10. A Worrisome Predicament

9

Fouhai twitched his nose.

Youkai crews scavenged through the rubble and ayashi corpse-trash. The Fairy Tale headquarters was once again floating above the world, though supported by over a thousand heavy-duty American helicopters, which Fouhai had gotten from a friend high up in the American Army. It was being transported to an obscure and very deep part of the ocean. Before the drop could happen, though, the place had to be looted of all of its dark little secrets.

The HQ had been a magnificent palace before Alucard's awakening; it emulated, brick by brick, Bran, the reputed castle of Lord Dracul, in its heyday. But now, it was a shadow of what it was once was; the grand towers were toppled over like toy blocks, the furniture was nothing more than shattered splinters and tattered cloth, the marble walls crushed into pebbles. It was a sad sight, but Fouhai was unable to hold back the feeling of joyous triumphance.

Alucard, being all the educated "gentleman" he had claimed to be, had kept vast libraries, in several locations in the world. One was here, buried under the brick and bodies of the ruins of the castle. Books, protected by powerful spells that protected them from being touched by time, stone, wind, or fire, contained hidden knowledge that had not seen the light of day for hundreds of years (despite the common vampire belief, Alucard had been only a few hundred years old; it was his family that consisted of the oldest vampires; Alucard was only an avid collector of his contemporaries' works).

Mikogami had left with the more up-front valuable treasures, along with any remaining information on Fairy Tale and its members, but Fouhai wasn't bitter. It took a much more sophisticated man to appreciate the ancient and eldritch knowledge written on these pages. Fouhai wasn't such a man, 'But, what the hell, I can sure as become one.'

Very old tomes the whole lot was, some written in cryptic languages that resembled none that the old man or Google Translate knew. He left those to the more skilled linguists. Chinese copies that showed up, he stacked into the shape of a throne. He had read their titles; ancient histories of forbidden civilizations, lost epics of massive scope, the writings of dragons. Beyond those titles and the volumes' pretty pictures, he had neither the time nor the immediate interest to investigate their contents more thoroughly.

He twitched his nose again. There was a scent in the air. A tingle of energy. The scent was omnipresent here, pervasive in everything, slipping through one's senses so that one must smell it. So powerful was it that it put everyone on edge, it made their skin crawl. The scent was all-too familiar, associated with too many dark memories of times best forgotten. Blood, a searing pain as every cell in his body started to dissolve one by one- Fouhai could remember as the stench hit his nose, as every instinct he had screamed to run away from the agony. But that was several hundred years ago. This was now.

The reek of silver hung low in the air.

A slayer had been here, armed to the teeth with poison weapons, meant to utterly destroy an ayashi's very being. His blade's foul taint marked every single stone, the primal fear of the substance making it impossible to even move without feeling knives pointing into one's skin at every angle. The thickness of it made Fouhai's skin feel greasy… or was that because he hadn't taken a shower in a few weeks? Mikogami had been right about those kids… they were more trouble than they were worth… 'I've had way too much stress these last few weeks,' he thought ruefully; 'an old man like me shouldn't have to do this shit. I mean, we could have defeated Alucard, me and Mikogami- that seal had weakened the vampire, but we had regained our strength, it might have just taken longer to kill him outright; the boy and Akasha's daughter were almost dead by the time we got to them- brimming with energy, but that energy was going to kill them, far too much energy for beings at their level to handle… hell, it was far too much for Alucard to handle. So by the time we killed Alucard and disposed of his "children", Mikogami had been stripped of his powers, I can't transform back into my sexy form… and to cap it all off, the werewolf bastard and the pedophile karate guy stole all of my porn! I'm an old man, for Confucius' sake, I need that stuff!'

His expression darkened. Then we found out about this…

The slayer had not come onto the mainland, else the traces of his silver would be found in Yokosuka, where nothing but silver jewelry were. He wasn't here, on the island, when the battles were raging, because everyone would have smelled the silver or felt its vile presence… but perhaps he had hidden amongst the chaos. And, obviously, he was long gone by now. It was strange… he took neither the battle here nor on the mainland to strike at someone, anyone at all. There were no casualties involving silver weaponry. What made this case even more unusual was that there was no possible way he could have gotten on the island. There were no traces of him going on the island via submarine, or via helicopter- both underwater and air traffic had been monitored before, during, and after the Alucard incident to prevent any unfortunate humans from seeing anything they shouldn't- and if he had gotten here via water while it was still afloat in the ocean, he would have had to be carrying heavy climbing equipment to scale the acute angle of the cliff alongside their silver weapons (because, while it may sound cool, you can't just use silver knives to climb up a rock wall-they'd bend easily), and then just as heavy duty equipment to get back down, and his vehicle of choice would have been spotted by Japanese surveillance. Whichever way he chose to get here, he would've been seen by some service or another.

"Quite the worrisome case, sir."

Fouhai jumped at the voice. "Oh, Ling, I didn't see you there," he explained, "I'm just being an old man too lost in his thoughts. My, aren't you looking beautiful today?"

Ling Ling Huang frowned. Despite how often she might protest that she was too dirty, or was dressed the wrong way, like now, with an inch of soot covering her crumpled uniform, Fouhai could only admire her natural beauty, still preserved sixty years after her death. A great-great-grandfather could only feel proud that he had made such a beautiful person (her predecessors were just as beautiful), however indirectly, and such a strong person. A tad too stoic, but that was the jiang shi spell affecting her mind.

Fouhai pulled out a cigar, setting it aflame with a flick of his finger, then stuck it in his mouth. "It is very worrisome, Ling." He breathed in, then breathed out, "It isn't often we see a slayer nowadays, besides a few crazed lunatics that have absolutely no idea what the hell they're talking about, and that one completely serious and sane guy who has no idea what he's talking about. And we never see someone so… ineffectual. The fact that he has done nothing, this makes the case unique in itself, and leaves his intent ambiguous. He could've been here for the big prizes: Alucard, Gyokuro, the boy as a ghoul, Akasha's daughter, Mikogami, or, of course, Me. Or he could have been here to slaughter us all. Whether he had some other purpose, whether he came late intentionally, the fact he exists at all worries me."

Ling nodded. She said coolly, "I know all of that, sir. What I was going to say that was worrisome was that one of the Fairy Tale is still alive."

Fouhai near jumped out of his seat, and he choked on a cloud of smoke. "Wh-what? Why the hell didn't you tell me first, before I went off into an old man's rambling! Bring me to him before he dies!"

He hopped out of his chair, and Ling hopped (her legs had gone through rigor mortis) before him, and he followed her. She brought him to one of the last intact spires (though the tower that held it had long fallen), which had been flipped over to reveal a single body, not torn apart by the boy-ghoul, but crushed under the rubble. A worker, then, just high enough above a grunt on the evil organization hierarchy that they weren't as expendable and didn't have to throw themselves at incoming death.

Medics were at the body's side, checking IVs that were feeding a blue-black substance, presumably blood, into the body. It was an insectile being of some sort, a cross between a locust, an ant, and a beetle, and its destroyed legs twitched as last impulses coursed through its nerves. Hopefully, it had an intelligent brain, or else Fouhai would have to more extreme measures to extract the information he needed from it, and his granddaughter being here, he would rather not have her seeing him like that.

Ling glared at the insect with disdain- or the expression Ling's stiffened face used to express her utter hatred. Fairy Tale did not sit well with her- their policies on the destruction of jiang shi based on the assumption that they were nothing more than human-created constructs had made her fly into long and terrible rants more than once. Even lowly workers such as this one, she loathed. Maybe, if it came to it, Fouhai would use his more advance interrogation techniques. She would enjoy seeing the insect shudder. "One of the humans found it as it tried to escape," she said, her voice tight and lips pursed whenever she closed them. "We did the work for it."

Fouhai grunted an affirmation, then walked up to the worker. It looked at him with eyes full of knowing, and hate. So it is intelligent, at some level. He looked back at it with indifference. "What do you know?" he asked it, using magic to make his voice sound in a thousand different languages.

The insect's mouthparts moved in a peculiar fashion as it talked, as if a thousand metal gears were meshing together and bouncing off, and its voice sounded no different. It spoke in Swahili, "You. I wouldn't tell you even if you tortured me and forced me to stay alive for years on end." Its mouthparts and antennae moved in a pitiful attempt to mimic a human smile. "Normally."

Fouhai squinted suspiciously at it. "Tell me. Are there any Fairy Tale members left? Are they still operating? And if they are, where are they?"

The insect looked away, though with is compound eyes it could obviously still see Fouhai. Its hideous smile was still plastered on its face. "The boss gave me the ability to turn into a human. A human being, the thing we hated yet tried so hard to be. I mean, vampires are nothing more than undead humans held together by magic, so are… zombies."

Ling's teeth pulled back in a glower.

"Thing is," it continued, "I could only use it for a week before the magic faded away. This was a few years back, just to let you know… anyway, I had been in Fairy Tale for a few decades by that time. I had left my nest-community in Somalia searching for real work, joined Fairy Tale for the money- it was good pay for what I was doing, which was simple engineering- though I had no particular hatred for humans, though I find them just as appalling as they may find me.

"It was weird as a human. Only two limbs, standing upright all the time, talking with lips. Weird, but strangely liberating. I could go anywhere I wanted (we had fake IDs and all the money we wanted), I could talk to whoever I wished, human and monster alike, without them looking at me to be some horror. First thing I did was go see a movie at a Tokyo cinema.

"I saw that movie Captain America-"

"Okay, okay, now you're just going off on a tangent," Ling growled. "Tell us all you know right now or we'll rip it out of your brain forcefully."

"Ling, you're not supposed say that," Fouhai said pointedly, but then said to the insect, "Yeah, do what she says."

The insect glared at him, if a thing without eyelids could do that. It spat out blood, then continued, "In Captain America, there is an organization like Fairy Tale. I almost laughed, it was so mirroring of all of Fairy Tale's core tenets, goals, and "values"; ethnic cleansing, an unbelievable superiority complex, amongst others. Perhaps we shouldn't have named ourselves after some human concept. We should have named ourselves Hydra.

"I have no particular love for this organization, but I can say this in all the zeal of a madman:

"You can chop as many heads as you want. You can make us weak for a moment. But no matter what, no matter how much you impose this policy of 'peace' and 'love' between monsters and humans, no matter how many of your people bleed for that cause, so many monsters will hate humanity that Fairy Tale will grow back.

"And whether you know it or not… it already has."

 

The insect had killed itself. As soon as it uttered those last words, before anyone could react, with its remaining legs it tore at its brains, pieces of black meat flying everywhere. Fouhai hadn't the time to even read whatever thoughts still remained, the matter died too quickly. In less than a minute, he and Ling were left with another mutilated corpse.

Ling could only yell at the futility of the interrogation, wreaking her wrath on any unfortunate soul to cross her; she left Fouhai to dwell on his paper throne.

'Another Fairy Tale… their main weapon against humanity's superior forces, Alucard, is dead; their leader, the she-demon Gyokuro is dead… what are they planning? Are they even organized, now, with Gyokuro dead?

The stench of silver hit his nose again. And with the matter on hand… this slayer, who suddenly existed here for one moment, and completely disappeared the next… 'whose intent is unknown, that we can do nothing about…

'Yes, Ling, this is quite worrisome indeed…'


	11. He

10

Three months after the Alucard Incident

The manse loomed like a decrepit and dying black giant, its shadow stretching unnaturally far, farther than a mile that shaded the car as it drove in. The castle was twisted, revealing its master's growing discontent. Spires shot sideways, gates were bent over backward, towers drooped and dripped like candle wax. The trees of the rolling grounds were ashy and bare, contorted into the shapes of faces and bodies wracked in agony and fear. The grasses of the field and the sparse shrubs fared no better.

This was not the home Kokoa grew up in. Her home had green grass, lush and perpetually blooming trees, and birds in the air. Her home had the servants' children playing in the fields, their laughter echoing sweetly. Her home was a majestic and soaring cathedral that touched the sky. This was not her home. This was her father's prison.

Her chauffeur and butler Hatsuragi saw her peering out of the car window with an expression that wasn't exactly excitement. "Ojou-sama," he said carefully, "I'm sorry you have to see the manse in this state… it has decayed since news of your mother's death arrived. She was his last tether to sanity and peace of mind."

"No." Kokoa said quietly. "It was decaying long before that."

The car pulled into the drive. The grass of the drive wasn't even dead here; only bone-white pebbles. They crunched under tire and underfoot once Kokoa and her butler got out of the car.

"What the hell happened to the door in?" Kokoa asked as she stared at the bare wall. "The portcullis frame is still here, but no entrance! Has my father locked himself and everyone else inside to rot."

"I highly doubt it, ojou-sama." Hatsuragi replied. He fixed his too-tight collar. "Your father is a cruel man, not sadistic. Master Issa's mood swings from time to time, and the manse contorts with it. Nothing has been lost; the door may be hidden, or entirely misplaced." The butler wiped his brow and fixed his collar again. "I must admit, ojou-sama, I haven't told the master of your arrival. The mention of children has brought him to terrible fury, and none of us have even dared mention your name or your sisters' names in his presence, for God knows what wrath he may conjure. If he takes your arrival badly…" he gulped. "I like living, ojou-sama, and I would like to die of old age, not at Master Issa's talons." He started feeling the wall of the portcullis for the seemingly disappeared door, tapping as he moved across its surface.

"If he takes my arrival badly, than boo-hoo to him. If he blames you, I'll stop him myself. I intend on bringing him to his goddamn senses, and if he doesn't like being brought back, I'll stuff him in a bag and drag him back, and then I'll make him apologize, to all of you."

Hatsuragi chuckled, fixed his collar. Would that thing ever become less than the noose he professed it to be? Kokoa wondered often. "You are quite like your mother, ojou-sama."

"I'll try to take that as a compliment."

"Please do. Your mother was one of the most determined of women I have ever met. Whether she placed her determination in the wrong directions was her own decision, and it is yours."

Kokoa nodded. Her mother… was the last person she wanted to think about. Correct that, I'd rather not think about her at all. She dabbed at her eyes, expecting tears, but her eyes were dry. Spent too many weeks crying, I guess. Eventually I have to run out of tears.

"Your father, on the other hand, is a reactionary man, but so many men in his 'field' and position, over the years, as the suspicion and paranoia pile up, become like that. In his case he has only become more… unstable. He grew more worried when Moka ojou-sama left, started to get frantic when you left, and finally when Kahlua ojou-sama left, he couldn't take the loneliness, I expect. Your mother's death hit him hard, and he had already started to degenerate rapidly when she left before all of you, leaving no notice of why she was gone. This time, I fear that he won't recover. But comfort him if you will, bring him back to the light. He can never be healed, but at least you can alleviate the pain. If only Moka ojou-sama was here… she was good with comfort."

Kokoa frowned. "Sure, if she ever wanted come here."

Hatsuragi turned from his work to give her a look. "What do you mean?"

"I begged her to come, Hatsuragi-kun; I pleaded on my hands and knees, told her of how sad he is, that he needs our love to stay sane…" She crossed her arms. "But she said she was too busy grieving for her mother. Who was already dead in the first place. More like she wanted to stay with Tsukune rather than her mother-fucking father."

"Tsukune? Is that the human boy you kept mentioning in your letters?"

"Yes, that's him."

"Oh… er, Kokoa, about, er, Tsukune…" He fixed his tie again, though this time in a far more nervous manner. "Your father read your letters about him, and he isn't a real fan of him. Beyond playing the role of the protective father, he… highly disapproves of the boy. He knows what Moka's Tsukune is; he knows about the ghoul. He's aware that the boy was once human, but that only justifies his point of dislike. He knows the boy is dangerous, he thinks he is bad for Moka. I wouldn't mention him.

"Also, about your own boyfriend…"

Kokoa snapped her head at him. "What boyfriend?"

Hatsuragi chuckled concernedly, fixed his tie. "Heh, well, er, the tengu. Master Issa despises pedophiles, as you know… and, seeing as you're rather young, and the tengu's several centuries old…"

"He's NOT my BOYFRIEND!" Kokoa yelled, her face turning a bright red as she said it. She could feel the embarrassment tickling her skin into angry goosebumps. "He's a friend of a friend of a friend! I barely like him, at all!"

"Say what you will of your own feelings, ojou-sama, but your father, in his normal state of mind, would strongly object to him even being remotely close to you, and in this state- my best guess is that the tengu would already be dead if the Master hadn't confined himself here."

Kokoa glared at Hatsuragi. The red did flow out of her face, but if looks could kill, Hatsuragi would have been disintegrated. The butler fixed his tie.

Finding a thin and near invisible crack in the wall, Hatsuragi dug his nails beneath it to find a grip, and with a grunt of strength from him and a squeal of age from the door, it slowly opened. In its entrance, the door began to shape itself anew, nearly collapsing but for the single edge Hatsuragi pulled upon; dark, rich wood began to fill empty spaces, blasphemous symbols engraved upon their surfaces, a bluish, tarnished metal lining the edges. Gravel crushed into powder as the incoming sorcerous weight of the door touched their fragile substances, weeds sprouting out of the thin soil wilted or burned without flame. A wind hissed into the building as pressures equalized.

Kokoa saw the inside, and was shocked- where once was a grand entryway, there was only a long hall, lined with beds. The castle had so distorted that every room, every staircase, every open space had hollowed into this single, seemingly cavernous room larger than the outside, and completely different from the wracked exterior. Bare walls devoid of color to not even be white- it was an off-grey, a color that seemed so simple yet dazzled the mind with its lack of anything. Ceiling blended into wall into floor, with no division or shading to tell the difference. Kokoa felt as if the room should be cylindrical with its homogeny, but her first and second steps confirmed that it was flat, but the effect still dazzled her senses into dizziness.

And at the far end of the hall, there was a single door.

Maids and menservants started at Kokoa and Hatsuragi's entrance, even to the point of jumping or even falling off their individual beds. Moments passed before recognition flickered in their minds like a long-lost spark after a downpour of oppression- and the stampede began. A swarm of suddenly bawling servants tackled Kokoa to take her into their arms, squealing with delight even as they wept for their finally-returned mistress and friend. Kokoa couldn't help her own tears from flowing, and before she could stop herself she was bawling and sobbing joyful and sorrowful tears right alongside her closest of friends.

Here was Minoyo, clutching her hands, the girl who always cut Kokoa's hair in just the way she wanted, even if it looked absolutely stupid, and they always giggled at mansion gossip as one cut and brushed the other's hair- and, oh God, there was Kinoji! The servant who had proposed to her only a thousand times, each time in the sweetest yet most awkward way (he stuttered naturally, tripping over any romantic words and transforming it into a cute mumble). She kissed him on the cheek every time he did, which satisfied him enough. Hanataro, Nunez, Taro, Katarina, Elizabeth, Nikita, Watanabe! Familiar faces, smiling faces- but in their eyes they revealed a ravenous desperation, and a persistent, sinister fear, all too similar to the fear of a yakuza as they bowed before their vampiric lord.

Kokoa's tears stopped. Gone was the sudden joy, the familiarity and sense of returning, and in its place was a gloomy and determined sense of alienation. This was not her home. These were not her friends. This was her father's prison, and these were those he dragged down with him, unable to leave, trapped like rats in a trap; pained, hungry, shells of who they once were.

She shrugged them off. Grins turned to grimaces and chattering teeth. They stared at her anxiously, only the tiniest movements of the eyes suggesting her destination, the place they dared not enter- through the door at the end of the hall. The beds were maneuvered around to avoid it, clutching to the apparent safety of the outside they could not reach. An invisible aura surrounded it, clawed at the mind with the complex simplicity of the room against the outstanding of its very presence.

The servants could immediately tell what her goal was. They mustered whatever voices they had to whisper warnings, either to prepare her for what she was about to do, to tell her what she could expect, or to tell her to turn back and never return.

"The path is broken-"

"Hear their screams-"

"He's taken the girls, one by one-"

"You can hear him roar as he rages, it shakes the whole house-"

"Got into your mother's stash-"

"He will kill us ALL if you don't leave now, ojou-sama-"

"Your school is safer, we can survive here, you needn't sacrifice yourself for us-"

Kokoa did not let such ignorant talk reach her newfound resolve. She muttered a few scant repetitions of "I'll be fine," kissing foreheads and comforting those who still wept. She kept her distance, now. She needed to be cold, her heart and mind hardened as a shield against what horrors her father's demented brain could summon.

She gave Hatsuragi one last reassuring look. He nodded. He fixed his tie. The door at the end of the hall of the hall beckoned to her, almost as if it whispered in her mind…

A gnawing power bit at her confidence, and spit out fear in her confidence's place…

 

The stench hit her first. The blood.

She screeched as her leg was sucked into a foot-deep puddle of blood, shocking her out of her stoicism and launching her into a cacophony of sound, light, and colors that hit her mind in a sudden gust. She struggled out of the thick puddle, trying to lean against what she thought was the wall where the door had been- only to keep moving. Her heart leapt a beat and into a fluttering panic as the disorientation set in- her hands waved wildly to feel anything besides empty air, groping for a solid surface beyond the floor. She didn't dare to stand, while unaware of the proportions of her surroundings- was it crushing her? Was it expanding? Where was there to go but nowhere?

Several minutes (if Kokoa's perception of time had not been manipulated) passed before sense came back into the world- but not into Kokoa. The madness of it all, the exhilaration of ignorance and the omnipotence of insignificance, her mind could barely even begin to comprehend it. Thoughts swirled, half-formed impressions were forgotten, lost in a chaotic mind struggling to process what had happened only moments before. Alone, in the fetal position, she shivered as moment after moment left with each breath she took, emptying her mind of the vast infinity that shoved itself into her head via her senses.

She raised her head once her mind's gears began to turn again, albeit slowly. For a few last slow-passing seconds, her surroundings stayed a sludgy blur, but as the madness flowed away, they turned all too distinct.

The castle had been twisted in a far more bizarre fashion than Kokoa had imagined- if the entrance hall had been blown up to twice its size, this was thrice that, and contorted beyond the barest recognition. The manse- its stairs, its columns, its furniture, doors, pottery- had been cut up and pieced back together in a way that resembled the most eldritch of Picasso's paintings redone by an epileptic M.C. Escher. Everywhere there was splattered blood, splattered in shapes that disturbingly resembled the shapes of bodies. Gore was scattered; intestines, hearts, eyes, other unidentifiable pieces.

Light from the windows bent in odd directions, flipping and ending up on the opposite area from where it originated, but no pattern remained consistent here; the light bent where it willed, and some of the brightest windows did not even provide light. A conglomeration of jazz, playing only a few bars of a recognizable song before immediately starting on another, played softly in the background.

Bats that flew up in what might have been the rafters, though could have just as easily been the floor, or even a wall, flapped upside-down, their bodies turned inside out, their leftover guts dripped and splattered on the ground with a wet noise, but, like clockwork animals, they kept on flying in tight figure-eights. Kokoa looked away- an image of Kou transfigured into something that hideous forced her to.

Drafts whistled between openings in the "walls," high-pitched tones playing badly on heartstrings and the brain's wires, plucking them hard enough to snap.

Kokoa gathered the will and strength to get up, which was no mean feat. Her head pounded, her eyes rapidly adjusted to the pain, focusing in and out and out again with each beat of her temples. Blood dripped from her leg and skirt. She took her first tentative step.

Without warning, the environment rearranged itself in a whirling cyclone of substance; stone became wood, wood became stone, column became table leg, furniture became fragmented paintings, "rooms" turned sideways and inside-out.

And a long, piercing scream rang out, from far down this endless amalgam of a house: "WWWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!"

Kokoa's eyes widened. He knows I'm here. 

The screaming faded into an eternal echo, but the jazz intensified, sped up with the pace of Kokoa's heartbeat.

She took another step- wary to avoid the widespread blood and gore that, eerily enough, despite the world's transformation around her, had remained in their exact places- and nothing happened. She sighed.

As she went on and on, she realized that she could wander forever here and get nowhere, because this was nowhere: a state of mind, a sort of madness that convulsed at the exasperation of frustration, and the disruption of its "sanctity" and "peace," its indifference of calm. Insanity is ingrained into the mind like a bottomless pit; empty and infinite. It abided to no laws. On portions of the floor she would have to climb or she had to walk on the wall, in open spaces she had to crawl, and at times her own body began to shift on its own, contorting into inconceivable shapes and forms. Potted plants grew down; vases "filled" with water were inside-out; columns floated in midair, or tipped at impossible angles.

Over distance, the frequency and variety of disembodied body parts was increasing in leaps and bounds. Eyes ripped from their sockets, whole tongues torn from mouths, arms and legs, even breasts, covered in bite and talon marks. Kokoa's mind drifted slightly- she licked her lips at the thought of the taste of even the remnants of soft woman-flesh… but thought better of it.

If her father was somewhere in this conglomeration of images, ideas, impressions and passing thoughts, and bizarre convictions of what is and what must be, and all covered in a bloody film, he could only be in a place of memories, a place where he could wallow in his misery.

And it came to her.

A long time ago, when the world was pink and blossomy, when her mother, her stepmother, and her father were happy, when she and her sisters played together, when Kokoa didn't know what her father did for a living and to provide this life for her, she would follow him in the halls, wide-eyed and drooling, in constant awe of his every action. She would step every one of his steps (or two steps- his meter-long strides were hard for a five-year-old girl to match), clumsily imitate his sharp turns around corners. And of course, her father would know she was there. He always did.

Issa Shuzen, if he was nothing else, was extremely obsessive/compulsive. He had an exact route to every place, in the mansion, with a calculated amount of carefully measured steps. From the hall, he'd take the hundred steps forward…

When he met the stairs, he would take two stairs per step because his long legs let him- but remember, Kokoa, he took three stairs at the thirty mark until he reached the stop so he could end evenly -

He would move three steps forward, then take a sharp turn to move down the right-hand hallway for fifty steps. And he'd ascend the labyrinthine mansion, Kokoa close behind him. He'd take secret passageways; Kokoa would slip behind him. He'd address one of his many gun-packing underlings; Kokoa would hide in the shadows.

Then he'd reach the top.

On the balcony, a pitiful creature dressed in black rags clinged to the banister's bars as if they were the bars to his jail cell. He was buried up to his waist in wine bottles, shards of glass, and the dead and bloodied bodies of women, women with all too familiar faces eternally frozen in expressions of terror.. Naked, flayed, defiled- Kokoa almost threw up at their grotesque condition. The stench of blood, alcohol, and semen mixed in the vilest way rose from their bodies, but most of it wafted from the hunched figure. A record player next to it burst out unsteady and ever-changing jazz.

Waves of power crashed into Kokoa- black, vile, insane, overwhelming and explicit; the creature was blasting exorbitant amounts of unfiltered power, the kind that pierce's straight through one's body and soul like burning sleet whipping on a blizzard wind.

The figure reached a long, limp arm, grabbed the needle of the record player, and stopped the music. He let his arm fall back to the floor. "Kokoa," Issa Shuzen said darkly, his normally deep, resonant voice cut short by the nothingness beyond the balcony. "Is your mother home? I've been dying for her cherry pie. Hatsuragi doesn't make it like she does. It lacks her love. That's it."

"Dad?" Kokoa asked warily.

"What do you want?!" Issa snapped suddenly, his hands gripping his self-proclaimed prison tighter. He did not turn around. "You father is busy right now!"

"You're not doing anything."

"Oh, it may LOOK like that, but I'm really formulating my theory of the universe's meaning. It takes a lot of peace and quiet which YOU ARE NOT PROVIDING! Would you like to know how far I've gotten?" His sudden swings from emotion to emotion in a single sentence left Kokoa wondering whether her father truly was crazy- or faking it.

She opened her mouth to reply, but her father cut her off before a sound slipped past her lips. "You see, Kokoa, everyone I care about will die. Even you, of course you; it is inevitable! I am powerless to stop all of your fates! My wife is dead, my daughter is dead! You will die, too, and, Akuha, and Moka! I can do nothing to stop it.

"And I went here, to where I had first made love to both my loves. And I sat here, and waited for God, if he exists, to bring upon me an epiphany that would make this pitiful existence of yours and mine worth anything. And I'm sure someone answered my prayers- the Devil himself, perhaps- for a stark and harsh sonder came upon me- the feeling that everyone in this world has a life as unique and complex as my own- and despair took me. Be they as complex as my own, they are also just as futile and pointless as my own. For what does every life lead to but the grave? Even for us so-called 'immortals,' death ever hangs above us, ready to strike at the opportune moment, when we are at our most vulnerable- yet why am I not dead? Isn't that what I came for, WHY AM I NOT DEAD?

"And everyone that everyone loves will DIE, always! Despair is our pretentiousness; we fall to it when our idea of perfection in life fails to occur. Whether it comes swiftly, takes years of slow agony, or anguished eternity, everyone will die, and despair will come upon those who remain. In pain, of disease, of antiquity, of uselessness, of murder, of suicide (those of which the last appalls me the most, for what kind of person could be so cruel so as to make the world even more bleak for their loved ones?), they will all die. Every plant will wither, every stone crumble to dust, mountains shall sink beneath the earth, the seas shall recede and the creatures of the depths will drown in air, the birds will rain down as they all fall dead, and the creatures of the earth will devour themselves.

"I have lived two hundred years, two hundred years too long. I have seen battles of millions of men slaughtering each other, one side striking in vengeance, the other side blindly following orders as if they were dogs. I've seen hundreds of thousands of innocents, or should I say the 'less-than-guilty,' incinerated in a moment. I've seen slaves mutilated as they toiled, I've seen anarchists and socialists eat each other alive; I've seen dictators rise in blood and fall in blood, I've seen those dictators sacrifice their own people for an abstract 'greater good,' that can never be attained, will never be attained, for what point is good if it becomes pointless when all hell breaks loose once more? But despite all of this surrounding me, for the longest time I felt no pain at this. But… when Aka- Akasha… died…

"O Lord, lo and behold me!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, and his voice was somehow magnified by the nothingness. "Am I not wretched? Do I not dine with sinners that intend to trap me? But the futility of all their schemes and lies, the futility of the innocents' hopes and truths we find self-evident, that I have a dream, a nightmare, that the devil's finest trick is to convince man that he does not exist, but because we refuse to believe that we can do wrong, is that not ignorance? For, is not ignorance bliss, silence golden? Does not the world exemplify the stupid who know nothing of their fates, who march into the fires of Hell willingly, dos it not exemplify death?

"EVERYTHING I have lived for, Kokoa, is gone! Stripped from me in an instant! All of my life's work, to build my empire, to love my family, to keep our world secret, and, because of ALUCARD, my first wife, my second wife, and daughter are dead! My power is broken, and my empire… my empire has been taken."

Kokoa's heart skipped a beat, the sudden dizziness of confusion struck her. "What do you mean?"

Issa sucked in a breath of air as if to say something, his arms convulsing with a sudden anxiousness, and hesitated for several moments before uttering a low "I cannot say."

Kokoa crossed her arms, her fearful grimace morphing into a disbelieving frown (though her eyes still shone with the light of horror). "How can you just lose your empire? I know that my mother took your power away when you almost died a few years ago of a silver poisoning, due to your living will granting her that- but you're better now! She didn't have the power to assign an heir to the position, an ineffectuality enforced by the blood pact she made with you to transfer power! She-"

"Quiet, Kokoa!" Issa interjected. "You should not speak of what you do not know, for all it does is make you sound idiotic!"

Kokoa jumped back. Her father had turned slightly- but was under the matted hair was- "Father? What's happened to you?"

Issa did not answer. Curiously, he began to edge to the left using the shifting of his leg muscles; it took a moment for Kokoa to realize what he was doing- escaping into his own madness. Her eyes shot wide open in fury.

With a spurt of speed, Kokoa shot at her father- who in turn shot at her. She was the first to land a blow, a claw to his left arm, slicing his coat that had already been reduced by the clawing of women, and he struck out with a slash at her face, aiming for eyes. She blocked with her free arms, and crossed her arms expecting another strike- only to receive none. Her father had already scrambled to his feet, his arms covering his face, and he stretched a leg out into the mad corridors, only to be tripped by Kokoa's snatching arm.

Issa shouted a loud curse as his face hit concrete with an audible crack, but despite his pain he clawed at the lines of the tiling, struggling to escape Kokoa's iron grip. Even with all his power, his stiffness of muscle from his stagnation prevented from doing nothing more than squirm and flail, albeit powerfully, at Kokoa's hands to deter her, but her determination and her youth kept her in the upper hand. She dragged him back onto the balcony.

She stood up fast enough to pin down her father with a foot to his back. The man still covered his face. "Don't look at me, bitch!" He screamed at her. "I don't want you to peer upon the face of insanity! Please, listen to your father! I can't have you do this to yourself!"

"What the FUCK are you even talking about?" Kokoa yelled back at him. "What the hell could be so wrong with seeing your face? Is it because you're just so ashamed of yourself, because you've been doing nothing but laying here complacent of what your family? Because you got a bit depressed, so you started raping and murdering your own servants that depended on you and looked up to you? You don't want me to see your face? I don't have to see it to know what you really are! You're-"

"A MONSTER!" His arms flew from his face.

Kokoa screamed.

In the place of his once so-handsome face, that had seduced two of the most beautiful and powerful vampires in the world, that in his mortal life had enchanted hundreds of other women, there was a silver snout and a tooth-filled maw, an eyeless, grotesque, and obscene imitation of life.

The face of Alucard.

"Now do you understand, girl? Why I did not want my daughter to see her father's degraded and bestial form? I have accomplished what only one other vampire has done: I've lost my soul. My mind and personality are intact, my powers remain as they were, but my soul has been torn out by despair, and has already cast it into the fires of Hell! I can already feel the burning flames creeping up into my heart- oh, God, I have only begun to fathom the torment Alucard felt as he lay trapped in his sorcerous cage in his century of imprisonment, as his soul and essence began to burn like tinder… but he was not quite so monstrous, mind-wise… he was a lost soul, a son of a true monster, he was full of anger… unlike me, his transformation was selfish, of which I mean only self-oriented. He only cared about one person, and even her much less than himself. When she left him for, well, me, he began to stop caring entirely. He dwelled too long on the trivial trespasses of the past… he saw all humans as evil, but failed to recall that we monsters carry just as much sin on our shoulders.

"But he was evil… I'm not evil, I'm a good man, a good man, GOD, I'M A GOOD MAN, I SWEAR!"

Kokoa took her foot off his back, and she shakily kneeled next to him. In a small voice, she said, "Yes, father, you are a good man. You shouldn't have lost hope because mother and Kahlua died… you should have kept their memory alive by keeping hope strong."

Issa's snout pulled back into a sneer. "Did you listen to a word I said? I didn't lose hope because Kahlua and Gyokuro died- I said I began to contemplate my pitiful existence. My contemplation brought about questions, and memories. While I did not dwell on the wrongs of before, I recollected details, whispers of whispers, rumors of rumors, the gossiping words of the servants. Current events came to my attention. At first, I investigated certain instances by interrogating the serving staff. Hatsuragi knew nothing of what I searched for. All of the younger servants were both ignorant and unable to recall the time before their births. The older maids, most refused to speak. Oh, they'd go on and on about 'rumors,' most of which were lies and others unimportant. I had to enhance my methods.

"Word of Gyokuro's and Kahlua's deaths arrived, carried by members of the Shuzen yakuza family. Members, who said they had been told by some other force to deliver it to me. They would not answer my questions. They would not obey my orders. They'd smirk, knowing I was unable to strike them to my own blood pact- of which said I could not harm any of them while none of them betrayed me! My connections were gone, my influence was gone. The servants knew something, of that I am sure, for they muttered amongst themselves of a shadow overhanging 'my' men, of a power that could possibly equal my own.

"But how could this be? None of my children, not even Moka or Akua, are that strong. Moka is the only legitimate heir, yet it seems that the power of the blood pact does not affect her, and even then I would have come back to power once Gyokuro had died. Who is this man? I asked myself, but no answer came to me. Only a legitimate blood-heir of the family could attain control of it, and my living will only applied for when I was ill- and when I healed from my poisoning a few months ago, the power over the Shuzen family would have left Gyokuro and entered me once more- and for a while, it did, though she still controlled her own little eugenicist organization. Whoever this was… was a legitimate heir. Perhaps more distant than I thought, but legitimate. I began to interrogate even more harshly, cruelly. These bodies around are the fruits of my laborious search for answers.

"And whoever this is, he has planned my downfall. My lack of soul negates my own blood pacts and blood ties to the family, and I only lost it once- once he told me…"

Kokoa's heartbeat quickened. "Who? Who told you what?"

Issa stared at her. Even with no eyes, blood like tears began to flow from where his eyes should have been, and his jaw began to shake with fear. "HE told me. I saw nothing of him. But as I sat here, on this balcony, he came to me. I only heard him chuckle softly to himself as he arrived.

"And by his blood that dripped onto this very house, he swore that he would kill Akuha, he would kill you, he would kill me, and he would finally kill Moka. I would know true hatred and ineffectuality as I could do nothing to save my little girls; I would know that I would die with the dread of knowing that I could still do nothing to stop Moka from being killed.

"I know not whether he controls my empire now, or whether he is even in the man who does' employ, but he has sworn to it. He will kill you; even after his death he will hunt you down. I could feel that his soul was too powerful to stop then.

"It's too late to save me, Kokoa… I cannot escape my madness, though you have let my true mind surface for these few moments. You cannot save me. But you can save yourself. Hide, fight back, do what you will. Warn your sisters, protect your sisters, save them from what this shadow has released."

"Dad, you can't just let yourself rot here-"

"I CANNOT LEAVE! My madness has chained me here, and its links cannot be broken without my soul, where my willpower resides. I can already see it seeping into you- you must leave. I will send you back- I have to-"

Kokoa felt her body starting to dissolve, her presence becoming ungrounded- half in her father's realm and half in the real world. "Father, I won't leave you! I'll stay here! I'll help you!" Tears rolled down her face. "Don't leave me alone, papa!" she wailed, "I love you! Let me stay! Please let me stay!"

Issa frowned. "Stay? Stay?! STAY!?" With the last of his strength, he stood up, and he pushed her in through the wormhole and back into the real world.

The world where He was.


	12. A Cold Day Before School's Start

11

Tokyo

A few days before Now

The coffee scorched the back of Tsukune's throat, and he could feel his body warm up as it trickled down his throat and finally blooming with heat at the pit of his stomach. He caressed the cup, trying to warm his numb hands. A frigid Tokyo gust blustered through the streets, and he shivered despite his two thick coats.

Sweet Buddha, you'd think a few parkas would help, he thought miserably. Passersby were struggling to stand the cold as much as he was, all packed under thick jackets and other warmth paraphernalia. Even then, they weren't shivering as much as Tsukune, who despite his piping hot coffee, could barely contain his entire body's convulsions and the earthquake-causing chattering of his teeth. Maybe I'm getting sick again. I wouldn't doubt it, being me. How many colds did I catch last year? Five? Six? I think I keep catching it because I'm too close to the girls all the time… scratch that. They're the ones always too close to me. He sneezed, the mucus shooting straight from his nose right to the sidewalk. And there you go. He wiped his nose with a napkin from the coffee tray. I sincerely hope no one steps in that.

Snow had fallen the night before, light enough to barely cover car windows, but it soon froze into ice as the temperatures dropped even further below zero. Larger businesses that mainly occupied the vast skyscrapers of the city had closed for the day, for no very important person dared drive their cars to work in fear of slipping on the prevalent black ice on the streets. Those who did still have to work had to walk, and most were obviously reluctant to do so. It was lunch hour now, near noon, and people were out and about, compelled by their hunger to seek food and refuge from the cold.

Tsukune glanced into the jewelry store. Moka and Yukari were still exchanging compliments on different necklaces, Kurumu was wide-eyed at the wedding-rings (of course), and Tsukune swore he saw Mizore talking to the manager over a case of diamonds, but at present she was nowhere to be seen, and the manager was now talking to another customer, a guy looking at wedding rings beside Kurumu.

He had no idea how the hell they could do it. In all that is good and good and holy, how could women do nothing but shop all day long? A man would take the practical side of things when shopping: scan the shop for what he wanted, buy it, and get out. He didn't need to try on every single piece of clothing that caught his eye, or giggle about pretty much everything to his friends. He'd go in with a plan. He'd do what he needed to. Then, he'd leave. It's as simple as that. Yet women don't see the practicality. They'd buy things on impulse; they'd talk for hours upon hours while the browsed thoroughly amongst everything they could get their hands on, or in this case everything shiny thing they could stare at; and they'd try on every single piece of clothing they laid their eyes on.

Buddha, give me strength! He prayed humorously, taking another sip of scalding coffee. They've been at it all day, and they aren't letting up anytime soon.

It was one o'clock, now, and the group of friends had been wandering Minato since ten, hopping from shop to shop, munching on snacks on the way, laughing over whatever they could think of. The chilled air kept their teeth chattering and voices cracking, but a visit at a Starbucks sometime around lunch quickly cured most of that. It didn't cure Tsukune's impatience, however. Because, well, they stayed in the last few shops for HOURS EACH.

I really didn't want being a boyfriend to mean this! Buddha, give me mercy! Strike me down so I don't have to bear suffering such as this!

He snickered at that.

In all seriousness, he felt close to hypothermia out here in the frigid cold, and he had been set out here to "watch the drinks-" which really meant the girls didn't want him inside for whatever reason, just like at every other shop they went to. He could either sit outside and huddle in his jacket, or go into a nearby, actually interesting shop and browse there until the girls were finished (however he was kicked out on two occasions: for soliciting on the first, and looking suspicions in general on the second). But after the coffees were bought, the girls had forced him outside to "selflessly guard the beverages," as said in the words of Yukari. So, here he was, freezing his butt off for a few hot (and increasingly cool) drinks. Not the most epic tale, yet it's tinged with romance and action! He thought sardonically.

The squeak of the door made Tsukune jump- the young man skipped out into the street, dancing with a giddy strut and laughing ecstatically. Getting hitched soon, I guess. The girls followed him out afterward, each one giving the man a disconcerted look. Kurumu was the first to smile. "How sweet!" she said in her bubbly giggle, twirling a lock of hair playfully. "I heard him saying to the jeweler that he was going to propose to his girlfriend soon!" Yukari joined her giggle, Moka smiled warmly, and Mizore merely stared at him distantly.

"Jealous, Mizore?" Tsukune asked with a smirk.

She turned red. "Maybe. I don't know."

Tsukune raised an eyebrow, and handed Mizore her drink. She took it, and flipped it upside down. "My ice water froze." she said resignedly. With a wave of her hand, the ice shattered with a loud snap, and she began crunching on it absentmindedly. "Aw, well."

The other girls took their drinks, and they hurried themselves to the inside of the nearest bookstore/coffee shop and sat down at the only available table.

Yukari smiled, and sighed blissfully, taking a sip of her hot (now lukewarm) chocolate. "Isn't this just nice?" she asked the group, a general murmur of agreement passing through their lips. "Oh, come on, don't be like that! Today was fun! It isn't real often we can go into the human world to have fun like this! I am kinda sad that Ruby couldn't come today, with her new administrator duties and all… but we can take her out here another time! I think she might like Shinjuku Gyoen…"

The other girls started to smile a bit more, their grins growing wider and wider as the conversation rose between them. And, once again, Tsukune was shoved to the side as not the third, not the fourth, but the sixth wheel in all of this. Each one of them was loaded with bags upon bags of new clothes, accessories, makeup, and even video games (some of which Tsukune had picked out for himself and Moka bought, which he deeply appreciated), all purchased with the massive amount of money Moka seemed to carry around with her, and they flaunted what they had gotten at each other, though when anything particularly "cute" popped up, they edged it a bit towards Tsukune, to which Tsukune responded with a smile, to which all responded with a whole cacophony of giggles.

It got boring. Quickly. In the only way he knew how, he broke up the conversation by taking off his jacket, and buttoning down his shirt a few notches. Suddenly, between the girls, it went dead silent, and they stared eagerly out of the corners of their eyes. Tsukune smirked.

To get into the conversation, he asked the girls, "So what did you get from the jewelry store that took about two hours for you to buy anything from?"

Moka shrugged. "I didn't get anything. They did have a lot of stuff I liked, but not the piece I was looking for."

"Which was?" Tsukune asked, his interest in what his girlfriend had to say piqued.

She smiled her mysterious, knowing, beautiful smile that always made Tsukune want more. "Nothing you need to know."

Tsukune sighed. Even with her new demeanor, Moka still spoke in that slightly infuriating way, where she'd speak yet hold something back, and twist out of conversations. "If that's nothing, then I won't ask further. Did you, in general, have a nice time?"

She nodded, taking a sip of her own hot chocolate. "I have't really done this before; however, I do dimly remember…" she paused, but went on. "It was really… fun to go out and buy all this, dressing up in all of-" she motioned toward her clothes-stuffed bags from several different stores, "-this."

"Yeah!" Kurumu budged in thrusting herself over the table to get up close to Tsukune's face. "I did want one thing at the jewelry store, but the guy who ran off had bought it before I did… however, the stuff they had at Matoya's, the dress shop Yukari's mother owns, that place we went to next to the market district, their stuff was amazing, I just wanted to buy it all. Your mom has great taste in merchandise, Yukari!"

Yukari tipped her hat, leaning back in her chair gloatingly. "I actually picked a lot of that stuff, but yeah, she does."

Kurumu continued, "We got so many things there, like, the awesomest dresses! For a long time, I just couldn't decide between these ten dresses, so I bought all of them! And I have a very, very special one, just for you, Tsukune."

Her rosy breath was getting to him, so Tsukune backed his head off, only to have her edge forward more. "Er," he said, "I'm not really into the whole cross-dressing thing."

"No, silly, I'm gonna be wearing it, but I'm gonna wear it for you. And you're gonna like it. A lot."

"No, he's gonna be loving my dress," Mizore interrupted through crunching ice, leaning even closer to Tsukune than Kurumu was, but budging against her face, "I saw the dress that you picked out, and I upped you one better while you weren't looking, and I'm gonna kick your ass in the sexiness category with it."

Kurumu snorted. "Yeah, right! Who's got the better figure, though- me, with the curves and the all around great body, or you, all slim and no meat?"

Mizore stirred her finger in her icy cup, the ice shattering and forming back together repeatedly, and she poured some to crush loudly between her teeth. "When it comes down to it, it only matters when you go all the way. I'm gonna get Tsukune in, and he's gonna stay in."

Tsukune backed away as far as he could. "In what?"

Mizore smiled. "I think you know."

"Hey, that's unfair!" Kurumu interjected. "I get to dirty-talk Tsukune, too!"

"Can you actually think of anything?" Mizore asked.

Kurumu opened her mouth with an obvious retort, but she paused to think of anything.

"Know your place, Kurumu, Mizore." Moka muttered, irritated, and with each name, she pushed their owners by their faces back into their chairs, which they crashed back with an "oof!" "He's my boyfriend. Despite what you think, he is mine, not yours. You can't just have him, or borrow him."

"Oh, but that's the thing," Kurumu piped, "he's your boyfriend, not your husband."

"And that means you guys can break up, and he can become another girl's boyfriend," Mizore continued musingly, "and by effect, he's still available."

"No, I'm not." I wish they'd stop "joking" about that, Tsukune thought, because it's starting to get really insulting. I mean, after all we've been through to get to this point, two years' worth of all of our struggles, have we not made it clear that we love each other? That I'm not going to choose, and I never was going to? He sighed into his now-empty cup, his breath making a hollow tone against the Styrofoam. Ah, well. I won't tell them and risk hurting them now. I'll let them have their fun. And, hell, I might get a bit of "fun" out of it myself.

"You're saying that now, Tsukune-kun," Kurumu said pointedly, a devious grin growing on her face, her fingers crawling across the table, "but a little gentle persuasion, and you'll be like pudding in the palm of my hand."

"Or my hand," Mizore pointed out, "you'll definitely be in my hand."

Yukari giggled. "It's so nice to have our group back to normal! It's always so much more fun! But don't worry, Tsukune, I'm fine if you don't choose me. I already have another man in mind." Something that sounded like a phone vibrated in her mini-purse she always seemed to carry around now, and she pulled out an iPhone with a heart-shaped case. "Excuse me for a second; I got a Facetime call from Ruby…"

Moka raised an eyebrow. "Yukari, you, of all people, one of the most environmentally-minded and traditional people I have ever known, have an iPhone?"

"Don't judge! My mom bought it for me for my birthday, and I couldn't say no to it!" She tapped at the screen a few times, and her face lit up. "Hi, Ruby-San! How's it going?" The group gathered around Yukari to get a better view of the screen and Ruby's smiling face.

"Hey, guys! I just wanted to call to see how your trip was going and everything!" She scanned the group once. "I thought Gin and Haiji were with you, today."

"No, they couldn't bear being in even a close proximity to a lingerie store, or any other place we would be going," Kurumu said. In a bad imitation of Gin's deep, Osakan accent, she bellowed, "'I'm a ladies' man, not a pervert.' Not a pervert, my ass! He'd fuck anything even remotely female in public if he really wanted to! No, that wasn't it. I did overhear the two muttering amongst themselves of plans to go to Puerto Rico, in the Caribbean. In truth, they really just didn't want to hang out with us."

"And what about Kokoa? I saw her over winter break- where'd she go?"

"She went to visit dad," Moka answered, leaning on a hand, looking bored and unimpressed with the subject at hand. "She kept going on and on about how he has a 'dreadful' illness of some kind. She begged me to go with her- but I know better, I remember when she was a kid, overreacting to every little cold that father or… her mother got. I'm sure she was merely overstating the fact. If it was anything worse than a cold, it's grief sickness, since Kahlua and… his wife just died. A few stomachaches and headaches, slight depression, no real big deal. He'll get over it for sure."

"Yeah, you're probably right about that," Tsukune said, recalling with a smile all the times Kokoa interpreted something wrong and disastrous results ensued. He trip and accidentally grope a girl's breasts, she'd beat him with her bat-hammer. He'd accidentally insult someone, she'd hit him with her hammer. Tsukune often got the feeling that she'd make any excuse to hit people with a hammer… "She overreacts way too often. But maybe you should write your dad a letter, see how he's doing or something."

Moka snorted. "As if. That bastard has of yet to send me any letters himself. Whenever I'm home, he's off on business. Whenever I call him, the butler says he's off on business. If he doesn't want to make time for me, then I won't make time for him."

"Whatever you say, Moka. He's your dad."

"And Fang-Fang?"

Yukari answered her: "He said something about his grandpa wanting him back in China, I think? Something came up, and I wouldn't doubt that something would, considering his 'family background' and what happened a few months back."

Kurumu leaned in on the screen. "I know that gleam in your eye, Ruby. You've always got it whenever you have something sneaky on your mind; you wouldn't call just to say 'hello,' we know you better than that."

Ruby nodded. Because of the iPhone's display, it was hard to read her expression as the screen was so dark from where he was sitting, but Tsukune could tell she was troubled. "You're a freaking mind-reader, Kurumu. Yeah, I called you for something more than just to say 'hi;' I mean, no one does that, really. And no, it isn't anything 'sneaky' or whatever. I do have a request to ask of you all, and you can choose to accept it or not, since I don't want to force either of the parties involved."

The group exchanged looks, and then looked back to her. "Go on, what do you need?" Tsukune asked for them all.

"You know how I work for administration, right? That I help register kids and stuff for school? I notice a lot of kids coming by to the main office often, and since monsters tend to herd together, it's rather rare to see a person without any friends… I met a guy, and I'm not really sure about whether any of you would even remotely like him… he's not a very friendly guy. But, in that way, he's very lonely. I've talked to him, as much as he'd let me… he has no friends. It's pitiful, really-" she suddenly realized what she had just said. "If you meet him, don't tell him I said that."

"Don't worry about it," Yukari said. She made a zipping movement across her lips. "Our mouths are sealed! Anyway, why not? I can feel for this guy. I think we all can relate to him, in some way. So what if he's not friendly? All it takes is some effort on our parts to get him to open up, wouldn't you agree, guys?"

"Yeah, sure, Yukari." Tsukune said. He himself wasn't too keen on meeting new people- hell, he already had plenty of friends enough to keep it hard to keep them all straight in his head. Sure, he had liked meeting new friends, but by the time it got hard even recalling yourgirlfriend's name sometimes, making new friends became a bit lower on one's priorities. And he did actually forget, sometimes. Sometimes he'd forget more than her name, and that was when he'd really get scared.

But, really, there wasn't anything wrong in encouraging a lonely guy. It probably would be Kurumu, Yukari, and Ruby who would be doing the main "encouraging" bits, but Tsukune was willing to give out some free pointers to life. It's what I do, he thought with a smile. This new guy might not be friendly, but hey, he couldn't possibly be that bad. Ruby wouldn't be stupid enough to hang out with guys like that. Then again, most monsters are douchebags. You never know.

"Um," Ruby muttered, "He's not the kind of lonely you guys are thinking of."

Mizore spoke up, leaning in toward the screen. "Is he the 'me' kind of lonely? Tsukune could cure him of that real easy."

"I'd rather not do that, Mizore. I'm proud to be straight, thank you very mu-"

"Ooh, I know!" Yukari peaked up. "Is he one of those closet gays that feel so lonely and isolated that they can't get any friends? Ooh, that just sets up a whole new romantic stage- a lone soul, whose lust for men cannot be contained, yet has to invert it deep within him- and suddenly, a wild Tsukune jumps into the scene-"

"Uh, guys, I don't like where you're going with this-"

"I can one-up you that, Yukari," Kurumu chortled, "He's actually a psycho-rapist that is trying to lure us all with his seemingly lonely demeanor, acting the innocent victim… and then while our backs are turned, he'll take us all anally-"

"Wait, even me?" Tsukune half-muttered, half-yelled. People looked in his direction with raised eyebrows. "Okay, that's too damn far!"

"It only goes too far when 'it' goes too deep inside," Mizore said with a small smile.

"I don't even have to ASK what 'it' is."

"Guys, guys, none of it's like that," Ruby assured the group. She sighed. "I really don't think he's gay, at all, guys. In a way that there's no possible chance, ever. He said it himself, actually, if not in those exact words."

"Don't worry, Ruby, we'll try our best to humor him," Moka said finally, her tone implying that a definite end must come to the whole conversation. She flicked the screen of the iPhone absentmindedly. "I know you wanted to go with us, Ruby, but there will be a next time, just so you know. Thank you for calling."

"Also, Ruby," Yukari said, "I got you a present, too, or rather several. Moka's too darn rich, I swear! She could buy the whole country if she wanted to!"

"Probably not. My dad's not that rich."

"Thanks, Yukari! I have been running out of new clothes, and my dresses are getting a bit frayed around the edges- you did buy some clothes, right? I don't want to get my hopes up."

"Yes, I got you a whole shitload of stuff, don't worry. I mean, half of my bags I have are filled with your presents!"

"That's awesome, Yukari, thank you so much. Well, guys, I have to go wake up the guy I was just talking about-"

"What? This late? He's sleeping this late?"

"Well, actually, he's just really high right now, more than usual-"

"More than usual?" Kurumu responded, taken aback. "What kind of guy are you introducing us to? Does he have… problems?"

"You wouldn't even start to know, Kurumu. Bye!"

The screen cut out to black.

It was sunset, the massive fireball on the horizon sending red rays cascading across the glass windows of the encompassing skyscrapers of the city, bursting into blinding, shimmering beams that reflected everywhere. The bus rolled in nonchalantly and gradually, moving centimeter by centimeter to a less-than-graceful standstill at the bus stop.

Moka's cellphone rang, its terrible tone grating against her ears with surprising voracity. With all these new inventions that she had missed while she was sealed by the rosary, this damned cellphone, the plagued device that all teenagers in all of existence seemed to own, was the one she just couldn't comprehend. It was called a "Samsung Android," as she had heard it, an intricate and delicate instrument, a most costly device in both its purchase and maintenance, and navigating its convoluted systems was a downright pain in the ass. Tsukune had declared that he would help her with shutting off the ringtone, but she adamantly refused. Nicely, of course. She would have to figure the contraption for herself if she were to really own it.

She took it out of her pocket, and turned the screen on. It was a "voice mail" from… Kokoa. She sighed, the breath coming out in a white, ephemeral puff. She slid her finger across the smooth, cold screen, and tapped for the call.

She put the phone to her ear, expecting something oh-so different than what she was fated to hear. Perhaps it's just Kokoa complaining about how I wasn't there for our father, who seems to be absolutely suffering from his "disease," she had thought, or perhaps yet another one of her endless and incessant grievings for her deceased mother.

She did not expect her muscles to fail for a split-second, for a sudden wave of uncertainty to crash into her, and another strangely familiar, yet almost unknown emotion to grip her heart. Her breathing turned shallow as the message played. For some reason, taken at face value, the words meant nothing at all… but the underlying meaning that was so apparent sent shivers down Moka's elegant spine.

A hand touched her shoulder, shocking her into a full yelp. "What the hell, Tsukune?" she gasped at her concerned boyfriend. "You scared the shit out of me! What do you want?"

Tsukune gave her a startled stare. "The-the bus is here. Are you okay?"

Moka opened her mouth to answer him- but different words leapt from her lips. "Yes, I'm fine. I was paying too much attention to the phone, I just- I- whatever. Sorry for overreacting.

"Forgiven. But… are you sure you're okay? You seem kind of pale-"

"I'm always pale, Tsukune. It tends to be a family trait. I am fine. Thank you, Tsukune. For caring."

"Yeah…" Tsukune pointed to the bus behind him with a thumb. "Come on, Moka, we gotta go, like, right now. School starts tomorrow, and my parents are going to be pissed if I come home late."

"Yes, yes. I'm coming." She gave a last glance to the phone, then shut the damned thing off.


End file.
